Day of the Falcon
by nomuse
Summary: An alien hand weapon is found in a newly-opened tomb in the Valley of Kings. Controversial archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft finds herself in the middle of a war between a secret military organization hidden under Cheyenne Mountain and a race of alien parasites who may have played a key role in human history...
1. Chapter 1: The Horus Jar

This is a cross-over story featuring some of the characters and situations of two commercial properties to which I own no rights and with this work intend no infringement of any kind.

The Stargate SG-1 crowd is drawn from some arbitrary point within the first four seasons; while the Goa'uld are still major antagonists, Janet Frasier is still alive, and Daniel hasn't died more than once or twice.

Lara Croft is more-or-less from the second continuity, that is the first set of Crystal Dynamics games, but presumably before the events of Tomb Raider: Underworld. Not all elements used in the story are canonical, not even to the admittedly flexible continuity of the Tomb Raider universe, much less to the more consistently documented Stargate universe.

Oh, yes. And the events depicted are probably a sequence-breaker for both continuities.

I need to be clear that all reference to actual countries, cities, peoples, institutions, and of course individual historical figures should be assumed to be entirely fictional and referenced entirely for the sake of telling an interesting story. No attempt is made to provide a reasoned or honest description or analysis of anything from the real world, from the quality of the cyan waters off Comino for skin diving to the mixed record of the Gadaffi regime.

* * *

The Mediterranean Sea, 36°01′N 14°20′E

* * *

The _Amelia II_ was in the shallow water of Blue Lagoon Bay off Comino, the turquoise water throwing back a sparkling reflection of her white hull and chrome fittings. She was a trim and lean 65-foot cruiser yacht — with minimum (though luxurious) accommodations and a racing hull. The pair of 600 HP marine diesels were powerful enough to push a torpedo boat through the water, and the craft was stout enough to take rough seas anywhere from the Cape of Good Hope to the Bering Strait.

Its pilot, owner, and sole occupant was also trim and elegant and had a lot more power under the hull than might be thought at first glance. She had started her day with a tough swim in some of her favorite waters, and as she dried off in the strong Mediterranean sun on the polished teak dive platform over the fantail of her yacht she was reviewing her notes.

"An unusual Horus jar showed up at a small private auction; it was from the personal collection of Catherine Langford, an eccentric Egyptologist." Her voice was melodious and measured, with the accent of South London softened by years in finishing school. "Unlike the straight wings of most Egyptian depictions, this one has raised wings that are strikingly similar to the Hawk of Quraish."

It became more than an academic interest when the auction house was bombed that very night: transparently, in an effort to cover up the theft of several items, the Horus jar in particular. The authorities had tentatively linked the bombing to the IRA (or, rather, RIRA, which was composed of breakaway members of the Provisional IRA), but Black Mike — a friend she had first met on the _Endurance_ — had used his contacts on her behalf. Which uncovered the clue that the RIRA members behind the bombing had been taking orders from Libya.

"The oldest depiction of the Hawk of Quraish is in Tripoli, on the Arch of Marcus Aurelius." Which was unfortunately in a rather public place, and while she was scaling it to look more closely at some puzzling — though nearly microscopic — markings she had attracted unwelcome attention. Not just local cops, but Colonel Muammar Gadaffi's personal troops as well.

After shaking off the Amazonian Guard, she had gone to interview the leading authority in Libya on pre-Roman antiquities. Who she discovered was currently a political prisoner in the notorious prison of Abu Salim. Breaking him out had made for an exciting night's work, and gave her new grapple gun an excellent field test.

Tawfiq Al Shafar had given her enough information to her out into the Tripolitan Sahara, to the ancient trilithon of Senam Bu-Samida. There she had to evade more attention from the Amazonian Guard, and a surprising number of armed regulars as well, who didn't appear to want outsiders stumbling upon the rambling chambers in Old Kingdom style hidden under the neolithic stones.

* * *

The reason was clear enough in the ultimate chamber deep underneath the shifting sands and behind a devilishly clever tilting slab of massive stone. Lara came to her feet, brushing rock dust and finely ground sand from her brown shorts. The powerful LED light hooked to her pack straps cast a cone of light into the dust filling the air.

Horus stood there, the body of a powerful, muscular man, bare to the waist in the classical garb of Old Kingdom Egypt, but his head the head of a raptor; a hook-beaked predator with that startling outlining of the eye that lent itself so well to depiction in Egyptian artwork. Like most Egyptian statuary it was of larger than human proportion, and likewise (at least, until the sad, faintly despairing fin de seicle flavor of the Ptolemiac sculpture) it broadcast power and arrogance and disdain. Lara felt sure that if the ancient Egyptian gods had been real beings, she would not have enjoyed their company.

The dias below the god, elaborately carved with the typical papyrus tree motifs, divided into three equal decorative niches. In a small pile of rubble from a minor rock fall from somewhere in the past millennia was the broken base of what could only be the twin to Catherine Langford's Horus Jar.

"Twins…or triplets," Lara said aloud. "The Colonel knows of this chamber. I wonder if this was where he headed when he went into the desert to 'meditate.' I imagine he holds the third jar that had been stored here."

She had to wonder what that jar contained, and if it might explain his meteoric rise to power, and his almost uncanny ability to weather the turbulent politics of this part of the world. She had witnessed stranger things.

She wondered how much he had studied the inscription on the walls. On first reading it was the typical voluble, obsequious praising of the god or Pharoah. The ancients went for that, as well as obsessive listing of possessions down to how many wives and how many sheep. Very rarely, she had found, did an inscription say, "Pull the lever to your left to gain super powers."

This one was typical; "…These generous gifts of the benevolent and mighty Horus, the God who Weeps…" And there was the falcon again, staring haughtily from the third line of the inscription.

Except, Except the falcon was staring the wrong way. Lara's lips parted in excitement. "Those ancient scribes were clever — clever enough to communicate with each other using subtle word-play, right under the noses of their Pharaoh. It should be facing towards the central figure, or towards the start of a line. If you assume this one falcon is not an error, but is a clue, then…"

Then the text was meant to be read Boustropherically; each line in an alternate direction. The third line was basically a palindrome, but beginning with the fifth line the meaning of the full inscription came out quite differently. "Beware the generosity of the traitor god, he that weeps but is not blind," she paraphrased. "But wait; if you read the cartouche backwards as well, the silphium follows the falcon. Drop the excess syllables, and the name of the god comes out not Horus…but Hodur!"

"What is a _Norse_ god doing in an Egyptian inscription?"

* * *

The sun had warmed her and the white one-piece suit had dried on her body. She uncurled from the deck chair and padded bare-footed into the shade of the cabin. A few small decorative artifacts occupied spaces in the wooden shelves, and a very modern laptop was on the desk. Lara keyed up an image of the text from the hidden chamber under Senam Bu-Samida.

"Hodur is mentioned only briefly in the eddas," she said, "mostly as the brother of Baldr. Baldr the Brave, a great hero of Norse legend, a warrior whose prowess would be key in the final battle. Except that he died in an accident, by an arrow loosed by his own blind brother."

What possible connection could that blind god have to one of the major figures of Egyptian mythology, the far-seeing god whose eye became a near-universal symbol of protection among the watercraft of the Mediterranean Sea for thousands of years?

Perhaps this afternoon she would have answers. Lara carefully put away her journal and materials, then pulled up the anchor. The big marine diesels caught instantly and she turned the wheel East SouthEast, heading around the tiny island nation towards it's capitol, Valletta and the National Museum of Archeology; where the more fragile artifacts from the Tarxien Temples were currently stored.

* * *

The Mountain, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

"Whatcha working on, Carter?"

Sam — Major Samantha Carter, astrophysicist and Air Force officer — looked up from the cluttered lab bench with what looked like a friendly smile to anyone who didn't know her. "It's fascinating, sir," she told the newcomer. "We've discovered an apparent violation of Lorenz Covariance." Her grin grew. "But Doctor Lee could explain it much better than I could…"

"Well, um, Jack," the stocky, bespectacled scientist began.

"Colonel."

"Well, um, Colonel," the third person in the small experimental lab continued without missing a beat, "We were noticing a recent and recurring uptick in the data stream from the gate network. See, normally, this would be happening in the background so to speak. Not something the average gate user would ever know about." He had pushed back his chair from the lab bench and was rapidly warming to his subject. "But since Earth's primary gate was first opened without a DHD, the data stream is visible to our computers…err, you do know about that, right? That we had to open the gate the first times with our own hand-grown system, not the Dial Home Device that the Ancients originally designed?"

"Yes," Colonel Jack O'Neill, also of the Air Force and Sam's nominal superior, dead-panned. "I was there."

"Oh, right. When Doctor Jackson first made the insight about the gate coordinate system. Fortunately Abydos was close enough that the gate was able to compensate for stellar drift over a few thousand years, or we'd have never opened that first wormhole! It's all part of the problem of the expanding universe. Which isn't really expanding per se. I mean space isn't getting bigger. Well, it is, but I mean things aren't flying away from us. Well, they are, but it isn't because the universe is exploding. It's all due to expansion of the metric."

"I know about the expanding universe," the Colonel said. "I read that book by that wheelchair guy. Some of it. The first chapter, I read the first chapter."

Bill Lee sighed, then put on his friendliest teacher face. "It isn't that complicated, really. First off, you have to understand that every frame of inertial reference is unique. Observations within a reference frame are consistent, but that's where Universal Gravitation and the rest of the Newtonian universe breaks down…"

Sam made a cutting motion. "I'm sorry," she said. "He's egging you on, Bill. The Colonel knows this stuff. He just likes to play dumb."

"I'm not just playing," the tall, brown-haired Air Force Colonel in rumpled fatigues dead-panned, with that little eyebrow twitch that after several years (and some very strict Air Force regulations to consider) still made Sam a little weak at the knees.

"He was bored and decided to make a nuisance of himself around the lab. It was either that or bug Daniel, and Daniel isn't as much fun for him to bug. So I sic'd you on him in revenge."

"He does, and you did, and is he really? I mean Doctor Jackson, of course."

"That was unfair of me, and I'm sorry." Sam sighed, still annoyed at herself. "Doctor Lee's discovery is important, Colonel, and he gets full credit for making it. If you have the time, sir, we were about to brief General Hammond on our findings."

"You want me to be a nuisance to Hammond as well? I can do that. And in the evening, I can go be a nuisance to Doctor Frasier. Except she has needles. I'm afraid of needles."

Sam looked him straight in the eyes. With those large blue eyes she knew had just as powerful an effect on him as he did on her. "Sir, you are never just a nuisance. Your insights are always invaluable."

Bill Lee looked back and forth at the two Air Force officers. He wasn't the most perspicacious person around, but there was a subtext here you could cut with a knife. In a rare moment of empathy for him, he loudly cleared his throat. "I'll get that printout ready. This would be a good time to go to Hammond's office."

* * *

"So what you are saying, is that the wormhole network is updating our stargate more often than it should be." General Hammond was a bald, no-nonsense barrel of a man in blue short-sleeved uniform shirt. He had the ability to grasp a situation quickly, and the experience to be decisive about his orders in regards to that situation. "Could this be an attack or exploit by one of our enemies?"

"We haven't ruled that out, sir," Sam replied. "We've isolated the wormhole computers from the network and are manually patching through corrections only as they become mandatory."

"These corrections," Hammond cut quickly to the heart of it. "This means there is something real in space that involves our gate?"

"Yes," Sam said reluctantly. She hated having to commit herself before all the science had been done.

Colonel O'Neill looked back and forth between the two scientists. He scratched his head. "Lemme see if I understand. The gates compensate for stellar drift. They move the coordinates so the gates go to where the stars are today, not where they were back when cavemen were riding dinosaurs around."

Bill Lee started to say something but Carter cut him off with a look. "Yes, sir, in a manner of speaking. Simultaneity is a tricky concept in a relativistic universe. Earth, or Abydos, has a unique inertial reference frame, meaning time itself is moving at a slightly different rate for each world. You can think of the wormhole network for this galaxy as having a single and arbitrary reference frame, which it uses as a template to adjust the connections between the stargates on different world. Sir, even the Antartica gate has to worry about this; the rotation of Earth is enough to cause a misalignment of clocks between there and here. It's the same thing the GPS system has to deal with to generate accurate coordinates for users on the ground."

"So the network is like Greenwich, and our gate synchronizes its watch to it every so often."

"Yes, sir." Sam was approving. "Another example would be your cell phone. The network calls it at intervals to find out where it is, and updates the stored location so it doesn't have to send a signal to every tower in town every time you get a text message."

"The problem we are having," Bill could not contain his need to contribute, "Is there has been an uptick in the number and frequency of these automated updates."

"So the Earth is roaming?" Colonel O'Neill asked.

"Roaming?" Bill Lee didn't understand the reference at first. "Oh, _roaming_. Like a cell phone you mean. Yes, that's it, the wormhole network thinks we are roaming. Oh, he he, I hope the Ancients don't bill us with a roaming charge! Ah ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha…ahem."

"Yes, sirs," Sam waited for Bill Lee to finish. "Earth isn't where or when the network thinks we should be, and is pinging us more frequently to try to keep us connected. We're stuttering, sir. The first incident I've discovered in our records is from three years ago, and although still rare the data suggests the frequency is increasing geometrically."

"Pardon me," General Hammond spoke then. "When or where? Do we not know which?"

Sam made that habitual gesture of hers that looked like she was pushing her glasses back on her nose. Except she didn't wear glasses, and the gesture looked nothing like that. "That's the problem of a relativistic universe, sirs. When is where and where is when."

"Ku ku chaloo."

They all ignored O'Neill's comment. They'd gotten good at that. "Well, which ever it is, is this going to be a problem for us?" Hammond asked. "What order of magnitude are we talking about here?"

"In terms of space, sir, tens of kilometers with each update. The wormhole network can compensate for that easily, but of the two possibilities that is the one that scares me most. The expansion of the metric doesn't apply at such fine scales. There shouldn't be grain in the expansion, not like that. It would mean something is seriously wrong either with space itself, or at least of our understanding of the universe."

"That's the option that worries you most?" the General questioned. "And the one that isn't as scary is…?"

"Oh, that's simple. It just means our solar system is micro-jumping in time."

* * *

Malta, 35°53′52″N 14°30′45″E

* * *

The National Museum of Archeology on Republic Street in Valetta was housed in the Auberge de Provence, a fine baroque building once used by the Knights of Malta. Lara Croft passed through the ground floor, admiring a reconstruction of the Hypogeum of Paola, excavated by the Maltese archeologist and polyglot Sir Thermistocles Zammit. The Grand Salon currently held a temporary exhibition of Modern Art, of which Lara was informed but largely uninterested. Within a few more minutes she was ushered in the office of the current curator.

Doctor Montanaro Gauci was apparently a man who took his work home with him. A crumbling bit of stone rested on a protective cloth under the powerful desk light, surrounded by printouts of micrographic images and chemical analysis. "Pardon the mess," he said wryly, coming up from around his desk to take Lara's hand. "Conservation has become a high-tech science, and I do try to keep up."

"Doctor Gauci," she took his hand. "Then I am even more thankful you were able to spare me a little of your time."

"Dear Miss Croft, it is the least I could do, after the aid you gave to one of my colleagues. I just received word this morning; he and his family made it safely to Rome."

There were more official-looking visitor's rooms elsewhere, with the requisite carpeted floors, massive desk, carefully selected artifacts, and a drop-down screen for the odd Power Point presentation to a potential sponsor. This was a working room instead, cluttered with books and paperwork and a large and eclectic personal collection.

Lara had the poise and manners to move comfortably in social circumstances, from a hot Shinjuku nightclub to a garden party in Windsor, but this was her preferred environment. The dusty shelves of artifacts, each holding magnificent stories for the person who knew how to listen to them. For some reason though, she reflected ruefully, her professional relationships did not do as well. It was troubling how many one-time colleagues had became acrimonious rivals over the years.

There was the falcon again, perched on one corner of the heavy-looking desk. This one, however, was realistically depicted in some dark material, possibly resin or stone. Doctor Gauci saw her looking towards the black bird, and grinned. "The Tribute of the Falcon, of course."

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, clashing with Suleiman the Magnificent in the long drawn-out conflict between Renaissance Christendom and the Ottoman Empire, had granted Malta, Gozo and the city of Tripoli to a branch of the militant religious order the Knights Hospitaller in return for the nominal tribute of a single falcon to be presented each All Saint's Day. The order stayed until 1798, when they were bankrupt by the French Revolution and then ousted physically by Napoleon, but until then had ruled the island and driven back the Ottoman Empire in the first major reversals that power had suffered.

"A prop, that is," Doctor Gauci grinned. He picked up the black bird. "This is a replica of the prop used in the Humphrey Bogart film, made in a small shop in San Francisco that specializes in Dashiell Hammett memorabilia."

Lara grinned in reply. Then winced all but imperceptibly at a memory of her own time in The City by the Bay.

* * *

She had been much younger then, and moved with the swallowed-a-sword posture of a recent graduate of finishing school. She was too credulous, and too convinced of the rightness of her own instincts, and she was sure, _sure_, that the great looming pyramid in the center of San Francisco's financial district had been secretly funded by the Illuminati.

Her research had been hasty and incomplete, and led her to believe (erroneously) that the only access to the interior of the aluminium-clad upper spire would be from outside.

She had a passing familiarity with climbing from following her father to some of his excavations. But this large, and public, skyscraper was a unique problem. While strolling the crowds in the crowded, tourist-kitschy Fisherman's Wharf — the northern waterfront of the city a local much-beloved columnist had named "Bagdad by the Bay" — she had a breakthrough. On the greens below Girardelli square, from which still wafted the unmistakable odor of fresh chocolate, a row of tall decorative iron lampposts marched in a gentle curve to the gates of the Maritime Museum.

The greens were filled with tourists and children and sunbathers and day painters and students. And some of the later were formed an excited group around two of the towering lampposts.

As she watched, a young man in a cropped orange shirt swung his body in an arc about the decorative Art Nouveau arm of one fixture, his head at least four meters above the ground, then released; hurling through space in a gymnastic move that brought him with a smack of the palms into the arms of the next post along.

There was a cheer from the crowd, and a round of friendly taunting. As she watched, a dark-haired young man in denim shorts, and a young woman shorter than Lara herself scrambled in turn up the first post, transferred their grip to the narrow metal arm, then performed the pull-over that began the routine. Lara could not suppress her gasp of fear as each in turn launched themselves into space, and she didn't begin breathing normally until each had returned safely to the ground.

She was an accomplished gymnast already. Her hands moved unconsciously, rehearsing the motions. She had not noticed that she had also drawn closer, pushing through the crowd, but one of the climbers did. The young man in the cropped orange shirt looked at her in friendly challenge. "You going to try?"

"Not without gloves," Lara said, and turned away.

Twenty minutes later she was back, having purchased gloves at one of the trendy stores lining the area, and clothes a little easier to move in than the calve-length white sundress she had been wearing. Both boys spotted her climb, and that was a good thing as she failed to stick the first jump. Hitting rough cast iron instead of the more forgiving equipment of a modern gymnasium had stung, even through gloves, and that broke her concentration. But she made the next one.

"You should talk to Jon," the lamppost jumpers had told her after a time. "He gets off shift at four."

Having money made for a more practical approach. Lara strolled to the pedibike dispatch stall, and put down money for a hire. "I want Jon," she said. "As soon as he is available."

As the very fit young man with the French accent pedaled her down the Embarcadero he told Lara over his shoulder a little of San Francisco's burgeoning "buildering" community. She had heard, vaguely, of the Night Climbers of Cambridge, or the "vadders" who explored the steam tunnels under MIT, but her background lacked the experience of being at a major university. And as far back as urban climbing went, this was still well before the term "Parkour" was on every lip.

After she promised to read up a little — the 'zine "Urban Archeology" was available in the independents section of local comic book stores — he gave her an invite to a crawl taking place that weekend. "16th St. Mission station," he said. "Bring a flashlight. And waterproof shoes."

* * *

Over the next few weeks, she learned many of the names and faces of the people who were exploring the usually untrod parts of the city. Some were photographers, some students of architecture, others were in it for the thrill. They got chased out of at least one storm drain, performed a reccee of the Golden Gate bridge for a team that intended to abseil down into Fort Point, took pictures of climbers on an otherwise unremarkable building for the local 'zine. And she learned her urban climbing skills, mostly in (relatively) safer surrounds, like doing a long traverse around the outside of the Museum of Modern Art, or practicing more dynamic moves in the rather more controlled surroundings of the Pickle Family Circus circus arts school; a tottering warehouse filled with old props and chalk dust in the Mission District.

Her funds were the deciding point in favor of the very public ascent they made one typically fog-shrouded weekday night. All went more or less as planned. The trickiest part had been the transfer from the scalable inner core to the wide "wings" that framed out the lower stories, but from there it was a simple if exhausting set of repeated mantling exercises. About two in the morning the fog broke, and by two-thirty their ascent was made more colorful by a cluster of parked police cars.

And the aluminium cap had no form of access from outside. With a clever bit of rope-work they were able to summit, and clasp hands over the glass final cap, brilliantly lit by the red aircraft beacon inside. Ruefully, Lara realized there had to be internal access to service all of those light bulbs, and her research had been in error.

Fortunately the final part of the plan also worked to perfection. After a few heart-stopping moments as they parted and ran face-down down the sharply slanting sides of the building, their parasails popped open. And thus they BASE jumped over the surrounding buildings and the waiting police to the safety of their friend's getaway vans.


	2. Chapter 2 : The Knights of Malta

ARLINGTON, VA 38°91′N 77°11′W

* * *

Some other time, Lara would have taken her boat across the Atlantic. Being alone on the open ocean was a good way to clear your head. But something about the Tears of Horus affair was bugging her, urging her to keep the pressure on. So she had Cap'n Mike flown out to Valletta to see to the _Amelia II_ while she flew commercial to the East Coast of the United States. Dulles was not her favorite airport, but it was convenient enough to the bed and breakfasts of upscale Georgetown.

Cap'n Mike would take the long road, perhaps puttering about the Mediterranean Basin, perhaps heading out to the Bahamas, or perhaps pulling in to do more tinkering to the boat. Lara didn't care. Even when he'd managed to somehow strand himself on Lake Titicaca, the _Amelia II _was easy enough to move by truck and air; it would be where she needed it the next time she needed it, and in better condition than she'd left it to boot.

The area around DC, around the original thirteen colonies, wore its history as proudly as the American flags that waved from every other house. Which faintly amused Lara; their entire history as a nation would be not even a blip on the scales of history she usually delved. The Hapsburg dynasty alone had ruled longer than the experiment in democracy had run.

* * *

The interview at the National Museum of Archaeology in Valetta had been productive, but had also turned uncomfortable. It seemed to Lara that there were two worlds of archaeology. One was the respected journals, the big conferences, the university postings and the book deals. The other was an underworld of fringe journals and madmen; a world of careers ruined, of facts mainstream archaeologists spoke of only reluctantly, of finds hidden under Official Secrets acts.

She was part of that world, as apparently had been the younger Catherine Langford. So while she kept Doctor Gauci talking about the Battle of Lepanto or the Roman rule of the islands he was friendly and voluble. But he was less inclined to follow her into speculations about the hidden history of the Knights of Malta, or worse yet, the brief and cryptic mentions of the Tears of Horus that followed two famous admirals around.

The first was Turgut Reis, privateer, pasha, and admiral for the Ottoman Empire. Early in his career he had been captured at Corsica, and spent a few years rowing as a galley slave before being traded by Barbarossa back to Suleiman. He rose swiftly from that less than auspicious beginning, becoming commander in chief of the Ottoman naval forces in the Mediterranean. He sacked Malta, captured most of Tunisia, and assaulted Spanish ports as far as Sardinia and Rapallo.

After his capture of Tripoli he became Sanjek Bey, or provincial governor. By 1551 his forces were sacking most of Sicily and sailing into the Adriatic, and he defeated the fleet of the Holy League of Philip II in the Battle of Djerba.

His luck turned, however, at the Siege of Malta. Which coincided with the rise of another admiral; Mathurin Romegas. Romegas first came to the public eye as the miraculous survivor of a shipwreck off the coast of Malta; emerging from where he had been trapped under the hull of a capsized galley alive and unharmed, along with (of all things) his pet monkey.

He made a lifetime friend in de Valette himself, and was captain of one of the galleys that attacked and captured a heavily-armed Ottoman galleon, taking important prisoners; an incident that kicked off Suleiman's determined effort to drive the Knights from Malta once and for all. Romegas was instrumental in the defense of the Grand Harbor itself during the Siege of Malta, and commanded the Papal flagship at the Battle of Lepanto.

His story had ended sadly, however; brought into conflict with another Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, he was recalled by Pope Gregory XIII in disgrace and died within the week.

It was in the many colorful tales of Turgut's exploits that the first brief mention of something called the "Tears of Horus" appeared. Lara considered it possible that he had owed some part of the miracles surrounding him to a duplicate of the same mysterious artifact Gadaffi had also taken from the hidden temple outside of Tripoli. Which was not to downplay his evident skills as a sailor and a leader!

And if you assumed that, then perhaps the artifact changed hands in the Bay of Malta; perhaps even found by a drowning Mathurin Romegas. And the conflict that marked his final years might have been attempts by others — perhaps the Papal throne itself — to secure the artifact for themselves.

As lightly as she broached these ideas, however, Doctor Gauci of the museum had treated them coldly. She moved the conversation on to safer domains, such as the 16th-century history of the Knights of Malta, and the excellent architecture and Mannerist details famed Maltese architect Girolamo Cassar had invested the museum building with.

"Unfortunately our collection is exceeding the Auberge de Provence," Doctor Gauci sighed. "The fine arts collection was moved out in 1974. And despite the extensive renovation we finished only a few years ago, we will need more space for our planned acquisition and display of Bronze Age and Punic artifacts."

* * *

Lara ended the interview there, lest it grow acrimonious. But as she left the museum, a startling quick train of thought took her. "If the Tears of Horus had come into the hands of a Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, could it be that the way it was spirited out of Malta was known to a select few of the order? Perhaps even hinted to their architect Cassar?"

She stopped on the wide street, the sounds of the Great Harbor behind here. And it was there, in the precise and classically-inspired details of the museum building's own baroque facade. The Falcon. Lara's lips parted. "I know where the Tears of Malta went from here," she said. "It went to Sicily, hidden in plain view — as the 1581 Tribute of the Falcon."

* * *

Catherine Langford had a neat, one-story home in a quiet suburb of Arlington. Short, twisty streets wove under a canopy of shade trees, and half the cars had access stickers or issue plates for one of the various entangled agencies that made up the Federal government.

It was a modest wood-frame, probably built in the fifties. It beat the more ostentatious pillared-walkway southern style of the larger buildings. Certainly, Monticello was a fine-looking building, but the neoclassical style of architecture always annoyed Lara just a little. You started back in the neolithic by propping logs on each other. The classical Greeks moved to stone but kept the pillar-and-lintel form, and over the years, elaborated it with all sorts of fluting and decorative capitals. And the neoclassicists kept all those millennia of cruft, though none of it had any part in holding up the building beneath it any more.

Catherine was a small, intense woman an inch shorter than Lara herself, with white hair, a friendly though no-nonsense manner, and an intelligent, penetrating gaze. The front rooms were stacked high with shipping boxes, and the dark polished wood of the shelves lining the understated living room were mostly bare. Catherine introduced her husband, Ernest, as she explained. "We've been cooped up a little long. It is high time we got out and saw something of the world."

Her husband's eye's misted over momentarily, and Catherine quickly took his hands in hers. They were very much in love, in a way that was unfamiliar to Lara. Perhaps one had just recovered from a medical emergency they had not been expected to survive. He almost clung to her, making plain that sense of fragility and the nearness of loss she felt from them.

"Sit, please," Catherine said firmly. "Ernest will find us some tea somehow, then he will join us."

"I am more than thankful for the time you are making for me," Lara said truthfully.

They made small talk as they waited for Ernest. Lara gave her opinion on a few destinations she thought would be interesting for the couple. There was a very sweet former monastery in the Sierras just north of Malaga, for instance. And it was hard to give a miss to the gemütlich little towns that crawled their way up the Bavarian Alps. Of course, how could one pass up Salzburg once one was in the area…

After Ernest had returned with tea and cakes and they had all settled again, the real interview began.

"So, Miss Croft," Catherine leaned forward. "I've heard of you, as I said in our phone call. You have a bit of a reputation in our field." The way she said it, it was clear that reputation was not entirely good.

"As did you when younger, Mrs. Langford," Lara riposted without rancor. "From when you were a student, up until the early 70's, you were rather outspoken about the idea that there was more to Pre-dynastic Egypt and the Old Kingdom than Howard Carter had ever dreamed of. Why did you stop?"

"Someone listened."

Lara waited, but that was apparently that; Catherine was not going to volunteer anything further there. "That's a lovely pendant," she said to end the silence. "Mjolnir of course. Are you Asatru?"

Catherine laughed. "No, I'm afraid I don't worship any gods these days. This is an artifact from Cimmeria. Meteoric Iron, actually. It was a gift from a former student."

The way she said "Former student" it was also clearly a half-truth at best. But the clear direct gaze of the woman also meant she wasn't going to be drawn out on that, either.

"Very well!" Lara had to laugh. She threw up her hands in a a small "I give up" gesture. "Let's talk about the Horus Jar."

"Certainly dear," replied the very sharp old lady. Very sharp indeed. "I am not sure 'jar' is the right word. The one in my collection had no opening or stopper. It was a solid piece of nearly-black mineral, perhaps a basalt. Density studies revealed no hollow inside, only a decrease in density in the interior; perhaps due to infusion of mafic impurities."

"How did you acquire it?"

"Fairly late in my collecting days. The Statens Historiska Museum in Stockholm had an interest in some Viking coins I had collected back in the fifties. Back when I still believed the 'Vikings in Maine' stories. They were willing to trade for some obscure and unclassifiable Egyptologia donated the the museum by Gustav Hallstrom, brother of Ivor Thord-Gray."

"Ah, yes. The Swedish-born archeologist and adventurer. I'd heard of him."

"Mercenary would be another word. He fought in several wars before moving to the United States, where he naturalized in the 30's. Oddly enough, he went into politics and was working for the Governor in Florida. He had quite a bit of money, too."

Lara did not miss the dig, but she let it go without being unduly upset by it. A Swedish mercenary, she thought. Swedish troops had looted the collection of the last of the Holy Roman Emperors — could this be how the one-time Tribute of Malta had made its way into Catherine Langford's hands? For that matter, did the Libyan-backed attempt to steal it back mean that the twin in Gadaffi's hands had been lost — or finally run out of juice?

The Holy Roman Emperors (which brought to mind Voltaire's acerbic quote; "Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.") The Tribute had originally gone to Charles V in his role as King of Sicily, but by 1581 Charles had long abdicated and Sicily was a much different place. It wasn't impossible, especially given how cozy the largely-related Kings of Europe had been with each other, that a falcon or two had ended up with the current Holy Roman Emperor — who would be then Rudolf II.

Ruldolf II; occultist, friend of John Dee and Nostradamus, early scientist, and owner of the largest Cabinet of Curiosities in Europe. Perhaps within that collection had been material that explained the true purpose of the Tears of Horus.

* * *

They finished the interview there. Lara thanked Catherine for her time, and for being such an excellent host, and she wished her hosts the best on their coming travels. But then she turned. "Catherine," she said. "I wish we could have been more open with each other. There are so few of us who know of and work to uncover the deep secrets of archaeology."

Catherine was silent for only a moment. She was not going to change her mind, but she needed to find the words for what she needed to say. "I don't approve of your methods, Lara, but…I accept the necessity. There is a hidden world out there, and it is as you well know a dangerous one. I haven't told anyone you were coming," she added. "But please be careful, dear. Above all…don't be rash."

Lara didn't think of herself as rash. But on the other hand, there had to be some reasons why her expeditions were much less grids of string and lots of small brushes, and much more explosions and lots of screaming.

She bid the couple bon voyage and returned to the cab she had left with the meter running. The driver appeared sound asleep with his hat tipped over his eyes.

Before she even had a chance to tap him on the shoulder both rear doors opened up and two men slid in on either side of her, boxing her in. One a professional military or mercenary type in leather jacket and sunglasses, the other a massive and menacing man with a somewhat incongruous woolen cap.

"Start talking," the military type said. "Who do you work for, and what is your interest in Catherine Langford?"

Drat. Langford had warned her, plain as day. Maybe she hadn't told anyone Lara was coming, but that wasn't the same thing as saying they didn't know she was there. "You were watching the house," she said brightly. "You don't sound very Libyan to me."

"We'll ask the questions here," the military type said. Lara didn't quite catch it, but it seemed to her the giant mook rolled his eyes at that. He might be smarter than that type usually was. "The Falcon — you work for him?"

"Are we playing Sam Spade here?" Lara asked. "Because I think it's time I gave you the bird."

She elbowed the giant mook, hard. He doubled over more quickly than she expected. Then she reached over him, popped the door and they both rolled out on to the pavement. The mook was rolling over, clutching his abdomen in pain; obviously hors du combat.

The other man was _fast_. He'd gone for his gun the moment she hit his buddy, and if she hadn't rolled when she hit she would be dead already. He was firing fast and he was shooting to kill. Lara rolled quickly around to front of the cab, the open door partial cover for her sprint to the next car down. Odd. What had changed? They weren't interested in talking any more; they were determined to take her down.

The front door of the cab popped open and the man inside scrambled out all knees and elbows, looking like a startled jack-rabbit. "Daniel!" The military type shouted. "Zat her, now!"

"I don't have the zat!" the third man shouted back. He did have a pistol, and was holding it in a good Weaver stance pointing directly at her. But he hesitated.

"Daniel!" the other man shouted. He kicked his way out the right door and drew down on Lara. But the pause had been enough; she'd darted from parked car to the cover of the ornamental shrubbery around one of the more impressive houses in the neighborhood. The first man swore and headed after her. "Daniel, see to Teal'c!"

* * *

The massive Jaffa was sprawled on the pavement of the quiet residential street, pain crowding his often-impassive features. He struggled to speak. "Daniel Jackson," he gasped.

"I'm here, Teal'c. Help is on the way."

The giant clutched his arm. "You must…tell…O'Neill. That was not…the Cha-Mak blow. She is not…one of the false gods."

"You sure?" Daniel asked. Teal'c said nothing. "Jack!" he raised his voice.

The military man was already heading back towards them. "That girl's a sprinter," he said. "Lost her at the corner of that white elephant there. He dropped down by his friend. "How's Junior?"

"We will survive, O'Neill. Do not concern yourself."

"You sure?" He held the large man's eyes for a long moment. "Okay," he stood and brushed off his palms. "Daniel, you see to Catherine. We need to take the hardware and clear out before Arlington's Finest come by."

* * *

Daniel Jackson, Lara thought. Doctor Daniel Jackson, iconoclastic archaeologist with a speciality in Old Dynasty Egypt. Interesting. She though she'd recognized his face while he'd been hesitating in shooting her in hers. But now the others had confirmed the name. She'd heard the entire conversation from her perch.

After the cars drove off, and when the police sirens were still comfortably distant, she lowered herself from the gables, grasped the decorative lintel, hand-over-handed to one of the fat ionic-order pillars, and slid down to the ground.

Perhaps there was something to be said for Neo-classicism after all.


	3. Chapter 3: Spooks and Thieves

And it's time to bite the big four-sided bullet. I just had to send her to Giza — and down to the Valley of Kings. In doing a little desultory research, I was surprised to find out how much archeology students like (and openly admit to being inspired by) Tomb Raider. And respect the attention to authentic details. Well…at least by the Art Department!

Again, I neither own nor make claim on any rights to Tomb Raider or SG1 or any of the characters and situations thereof. In addition, half of what I'm writing, even I know is wrong (and I know hardly anything). Continuity in both universes is going to take a beating before I'm done, but that's nothing compared to the mess I'm making of "our" world…

And, yes, I'm being a little cagey about who any of these people really are. The joke is, SGC looks like a typical Lara Croft enemy from here. And Lara looks a little odd to them…particularly when they start putting some observations together. Which means we have to slowly discover both, as the narrative unfolds.

* * *

Andrews AFB, 38°48′N 076°52′W

* * *

"Daniel, what was that?" Colonel Jack O'Neill was _not_ happy. He was starting into the best dressing-down he could give to a man who was nominally under his command, civilian scientist though he might be.

"Jack, what was that?" Daniel Jackson wasn't buying. "I thought we were going to ask some questions. What was I supposed to do, shoot her?"

"I thought she was Goa'uld. For crying out loud, she took down Teal'c with one blow to the symbiote!"

"Your concern is appreciated, O'Neill." The huge, golden-skinned man, looking a bit like an idol from an ancient temple himself, broke in. "I am unharmed. She merely surprised me."

"Surprised you, right," the Colonel said.

"She is not Goa'uld, Jack O'Neill. I sensed no symbiote in her." The powerfully-built man reflected for a moment before continuing. "She is much stronger than I believe is normal for Tau'ri." Another studied moment, then he allowed himself a smile. "She is a worthy adversary."

"She…" the Colonel's eyebrows crawled up into his hairline. "She…why, you old devil!"

"I am not a devil, O'Neill. I am Jaffa."

"Anyhow, not Goa'uld. I know. I figured that out on my own," the Colonel ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. "Those snakes are arrogant, but not that arrogant. She'd have never gotten into that cab with us."

"Look, the point is, Catherine knew her." The lanky archaeologist pointed vaguely, either in the general direction of the District of Columbia, or to wherever Catherine Langford's flight was currently. "You decided to push her. She, ah…she pushed back. Anyhow, she's a known person," he moved on. "Has an estate in London and everything. What I think, is I should just…"

"No, Daniel."

"But we're both in archaeology! If I just talk to her…"

"I said no, Daniel. Leave her be. My gut says she didn't know any more about the bombing in London than we do. She was just sniffing around. We're going back to work. If there's any leaks left here, the NID will handle it."

* * *

"The NID? Are you sure?" Lara spoke openly, knowing Zip's cryptographic software protected their exchange.

"I didn't mean they were at the door. I meant if you drill too deep past the Official Secrets umbrella in the States, you hit a layer of NID that's lit up like a plasma wall. Don't mess with those guys, Lara."

"I'll take that under advisement," Lara told him with grave amusement. "Now tell me everything you've found on Doctor Daniel Jackson."

"The guy who pulled a gun on you. Doctor, right. What kind of archaeologist carries a gun?"

Alister leaned into the pickup of the camera. "Our employer carries a gun," he said.

"Bad example," Zip was dismissive. "I don't know what this guy is now, Lara, but everything I see tells me he's bad news. He dropped out of sight in 1979. Last thing he did in the public eye was get booed out of a lecture where he was going on about Pyramids and spaceships — real Ancient Astronaut stuff."

"I'd read his papers before," Lara's research assistant butted in again. "Published only in the worst of fringe journals, of course. One unique argument he had was that the pyramids themselves were designed as landing pads for some sort of massive, hollow, alien spacecraft."

The wiry assistant pushed his glasses back with a forefinger and continued in his too-good-to-be-true Public School accent, "An interesting idea to be sure, but it fails for me on simple engineering grounds. Morse taper, you know of them? To get a good mating surface, the pyramid and the hollow spacecraft need an identical taper. Otherwise you are just making a single point of contact and you're wasting a lot of good stone."

"I thought that was a whole pyramid thing," Zip, the computer genius, put in. "The perfect mathematical form and stuff."

"The Bent Pyramid of Snefuru," Alister retorted. "The Ancient Egyptians were tinkering with the formula all the way up through Kufu. Most of that Pyramid Math stuff is Von Danikan crap. Anyhow, there's nothing in the literature linking Daniel Jackson with Catherine Langford."

"Nothing but captured video," Zip shot back, smugly. "The States are nothing on London, but I've got enough pictures proving those two knew each other. Recently, too."

"Good," Lara said. "Keep working on that. And what about the past? Did Catherine ever do field work?"

"You nailed it in one," Alister said.

"Jeeza," Zip said across him.

"What?" Lara and Alister both asked.

"Jeeza. That's where she was. Way, way back before the war. Before World War II even."

"Zip," Alister let out a long-suffering sigh. "It's pronounced 'Giza.'"

"Hey, do I look Egyptian to you?"

"Well, according to some theories…" Alister let that trail off, then turned back to the camera. "I can start inquiries after formal permits with the Supreme Council of Antiquities," he said half-hopefully."

"If you are right," Lara shook her head, "That will just alert those spooks of Zip's. I think I'd rather be a little more circumspect."

Which, Alister suspected, was just the way she liked it.

* * *

Next she was on VOIP with Massouf the Thoof, the man with his fingers in more pies in the black market than anyone else in Cairo. If the Mubarak regime actually had nukes, Massouf would be the man who could sell you one. As it was, he was _the_ middle-man if you were looking for the right people to broker anything from stolen antiquities to a fully-armed F16. He was also scrupulously honest. He'd gotten his nickname when a disgruntled customer with unrealistic expectations had started to call him, "A coward, a charlatan and a thief…" Massouf hit him in the middle of his tirade, turning the last word into "Thoof!" And it stuck.

"This is top stuff, very classified. I can tell you more but you are going to owe me."

"I don't _want_ to owe you, Massouf. You can take cash. I can afford it."

"Oh, be reasonable. The kinds of favors I need are the kind of work you are best at. So I get paid, you get to do what you love doing, and both of us get access to a new crop of interesting items."

"Giza," Lara was noncommittal.

"Old Professor Langford spent most of his career on the Giza Plateau. Real Howard Carter stuff — this was near the turn of the century. His daughter was out there playing with the potsherds in the late twenties, when they hit something big. Not in the necropolis proper, though; South of there, all the way on the other side of the Ring Road. And there's still something there…but you really need to see it for yourself."

"I don't have time for 'show me.' I can't just fly out to exotic destinations on a whim. Why don't you tell me what you found instead?"

"Well, I can't, quite. This is where that favor comes in…"

* * *

Sahara Desert, 29°89′N 31°14′E

* * *

Giza was noisy and crowded. Cars and pedestrians fought for space in the narrow streets and the air was yellow with dust and pollution. The Giza Plateau was of course filled with tourists. There'd been a bit of a fall-off during the continuing unrest, particular since the massacre of a group of tourists at Deir el-Bahri, but it was still a major industry.

The necropolis was basically in the suburbs of the sprawling metropolis that connected through Cairo and extended all the way to the coast. Outside of the narrow cultivated stripe of the Nile, however, the population fell off remarkably.

Lara and Massouf were lying on a slight rise in an otherwise undistinguished alluvial plain, all sand-colored with hardly a scrap of even the hardy desert vegetation to be seen. If it weren't for the contrails of airplanes overhead it could have been another planet. Well, that and the sprawl of buildings behind a rusty but solid-looking barbed wire fence.

"What are we looking at?"

Massouf was a short, sturdy man with a wide engaging smile. He dressed casually in Western style, and was currently getting rather dusty. "Munitions plant," he said. "Well, mostly explosives for industry. There's a phosphate mine some ways from here down that rail line. Most of the materials come from AFC, though, up in Abu Qir; Nitric acid is energy-intensive to manufacture."

"That explains the fences."

"They also have a contract here and there with the Egyptian Army."

"And that explains the guards."

"The whole complex is several square kilometers. Good business practice to keep your explosives widely separated. Not all the facilities are active; some of the buildings go back to the First World War."

Lara studied the scene through her binoculars. "I see temporary structures and shade awnings. That's an active dig over there, the Northwest corner. Late in the season for that; they're probably cleaning up the site now and won't resume work until winter."

"They've been at it for years, mostly just scrubbing around on the surface sifting sand."

"They don't seem to have made a lot of progress."

"There's a lot of sand. Come this way, Miss Croft — there's a place my sources tell me you can see into the pit from."

They crawled backwards, stood and brushed off their clothes. Lara was in her working outfit, which wasn't that much unlike what a student (with good sunblock) might wear on a dig. The sun was lowering and the winds already kicking up. Not that they ever really stopped, not in this quarter of the Sahara.

From the rock formation Massouf had pointed out the result of the years of "scrubbing around on the surface" was made visible.

"That's some excavation," Lara commented softly.

"This is where the Langford expedition was in 1928. I wanted you to see the old excavation before I showed you this." Massouf withdrew a small manilla envelope from his pocket and extracted a print.

"Most unusual." Lara studied the photograph. "From the shovel and crates in frame, I'd say the central stone disk was a good five meters in diameter. Some of those markings are hieroglyphic — but the others are completely new to me." She turned the print at a slight angle, studied one edge. "This is cartridge film. When was it taken?"

"1939," Massouf answered. "While they were loading the Coverstone for shipment. That and the other artifact went on the freighter _Achilles,_ bound for America." He shrugged in apology. "Security was very tight then. The Egyptian workers seem to have been unable to smuggle out a picture of the other thing. But the descriptions they left are of an extremely heavy ring of some dark metal. The United States Military was involved in throwing a cover over the whole dig, and it was moved out of the country before the war got here."

"The Coverstone," Lara repeated the word, looking at the lone photograph again. "That cartouche in the center. I'm a little rusty on some of the characters, but I'd translate that as 'Gate of Stars.' I'd really love to see what the thing under it looked like."

* * *

After darkness had fallen Lara went inside the fence. She was wearing her pistols now. She would rather not get in a shoot-out with military people of an allied nation, but she needed to leave her options open. The buildings around the Northwest end of the munitions plant looked to have been closed for years, if not decades. There were sufficient warning signs on them to make her hope she wouldn't have to pry inside. They might have ceased work, but that didn't mean they weren't chock-full of old sweaty dynamite, mouldering piles of oh-so-sensitive fulminates, and fragile containers of things with wonderful chemical names that suggested way too many fluorine bonds to be stable; evocative names like dioxygen difluoride, more commonly (even onomatopoeially) known as "FOOF."

Between a few crawls through shadow and a few brisk rolls where the shadows were less obliging, Lara got to the rim of the old excavation. There she unpacked the laser, and connected the satellite phone that would let the Iridium network carry the sensor data back to Zip's computers.

"I'll have a complete 3d map of this place done in a couple of minutes," Zip told her.

"Try not to alert any guards, though. I know running gun battles through falling-apart wooden buildings full of high explosives is your idea of a fun night out, but…"

"Enough, Alister," Lara smiled tightly. "Or I might just stop using this headset."

The invisible beam of the IR laser licked out across the old excavations first started by Professor Langford, the photocell logging distance and direction as it went.

"There's evidence of later work expanding the scope of the original expedition," Lara didn't bother with her recorder, instead dictating into the headphone mic. "Several exploratory pits, but the expansion is shallow. There doesn't appear to have been any extensive necropolis. From the depths of the sand, I'd say this was intentional burial."

Massouf's sources had said several minor artifacts had shown up on the market during the original excavations, presumably snuck off site by workers or grabbed by the ever-vigilant looters during unguarded moments. Most of the artifacts had related to Ra, but that was unsurprising; the sun god had been massively popular through the Fifth Dynasty out to the coming of the Romans. These were no burial goods, though; they seemed mostly small personal items, the sort that might be carried by travelers.

Unlike most archaeologists of the period, Langford had left the artifact in situ for several years. Of course, from Massouf's accounts it had also been an engineering challenge to wrest it from the pit. It wasn't implausible that the archaeologist had requested aid from the Army Corps of Engineers for that task. But that still wasn't sufficient reason for the US government to have gotten involved, and have taken the artifact out of the country.

"Alister?" She had a thought. "Assume the ring is as heavy as Massouf's sources described, with the dimensions indicated by the cover stone. What kind of material would we be talking about?"

Her research assistant worked for a little, apparently scratching out numbers on a sheet of paper. "This can't be right," he said at last.

"Give."

"I had to make some assumptions on the thickness and width of the ring. The first set of assumptions I tried, I came up with 22 gm/cm^3. That's ridiculous. But even when I adjust my assumptions, I can't get out of the metals. I think those workmen were exaggerating."

"Could it be that dense, Alister? I was thinking perhaps it was a heavy metal. That would be enough to want to get it away from the Axis powers."

"Miss Croft, that number I quoted isn't beryllium or tantalum. It would be well beyond that, out into the Island of Stability."

Lara laughed. "I won't pretend I understand what that means, but let's drop that idea. We obviously don't have the data we need."

"Speaking of data…" Zip broke in.

"Thank you." Lara put away her gear. "Now if you will permit me, boys, I have a table waiting at Sabaya."

* * *

"Any luck?" Massouf asked when she returned to the rental car. He was relieved when she put her guns back in the pack.

"Perhaps." Lara was non-committal.

"You aren't the first person to go enquiring after the Langfords, you know," he volunteered as he slid behind the wheel. "Had a handful of Russians about a year ago. Not gangsters; these were Foreign Intelligence Service, straight out of Yasenevo. Smart boys, too. They found this place and poked around for a week. As far as I know they didn't find anything."

He made the turn from a dusty, rutted trail to a branch road that was very little more than a dusty, rutted trail. "Then there were those Chinese spies. I sent them out into the Rub' al Khali."

"I thought you always gave fair value."

"I did. Typical Chinese Intelligence — they paid me in counterfeit money. So I gave them a counterfeit map."

"So." Lara gave it a long pause. "My half of the bargain."

Massouf looked uncomfortable, perhaps the first time she'd seen him do so. "This is not entirely business. I need help on what you might call a personal matter."

"Go on." Lara made her reply as neutral as she could.

"A friend of the family. A young man, a student at Cairo University. He was working as a digger when he died. Under somewhat mysterious circumstances. The spot where his body was found seemed to be nothing but the rubble from 19th Dynasty workman's huts…until this year, when Dr. Schaden of the University of Memphis uncovered KV63 under those huts."

Massouf gripped the wheel and shrugged under his linen jacket. "Miss Croft, it is my belief something happened inside that tomb. And the Supreme Council of Antiquities is running too tight a ship these days — particularly with Talaa'al al-Fateh running about — for me to poke around personally."

"In 'there'," Lara said. "You said KV63. That's a designation for excavations in the Valley of Kings!" Which was only the most tourist-inspected, tightly-guarded, and otherwise completely exposed location outside of The Sphinx itself.

"I can get you in," Massouf said. "Your problem is going to be finding whatever it was inside that killed my friend."


	4. Chapter 4: The Valley of Kings

This tale takes place in some nebulous place between 2001 and 2006 — the air or release dates for each property — but I'm being selective in what I admit to the continuity. As for our world, the two admirals are real, as is Dr. Gauci, although he is in the wrong job (and I hope he forgives me.)

Zahi Hawass, however, needs no apologies from me. You can hardly get to be more of a public figure than starring in a Reality TV show ("Chasing Mummies" in 2011). Zahi was too good not to use in this story, but he throws into relief the problem of reconciling the Stargate universe and real archaeology: both the science, and the people in it. I can't imagine either that Zahi wouldn't know, or that he wouldn't do anything about, the Stargate removed from Giza.

Egypt has changed quite a bit in the last few years. But so, really, has the rest of the world. Anyhow, next chapter, I promise, we'll finally get to the exotic and far-off land of Colorado.

* * *

The Valley of Kings, 25.44°N 32.36°E

* * *

Lara was getting tired of sand. It would make a nice change, she thought, to do some work in a sunken temple sometime. Or snow. Although you would think she'd seen enough snow for a lifetime, having walked out of the Himalayas alone at nine years old.

But this was the Valley of Kings: practically where it had all started. Napoleon's men had poked around these digs. Centurions had scratched the Roman equivalent of "Kilroy was here" on exposed walls. The discoveries that had inflamed a public interest in the ancient world, an interest that still continued today, were made here (and further along the Nile). It was here, too, that archaeology began the gradual shift from the mere collection of exotica for a Cabinet of Curiosities, to the meticulous recording of matrix and context, and the layers of analysis and meta-analysis as archeology evolved into a real science.

Not that the popular aspects had ever quite left the craft. A television crew with their reflectors, boom mics, and shiny boxes of technical gear were clustered around the Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities as he hammed it up in front of the unprepossessing entrance of KV63. Dr. Otto Schaden and his team lurked in the background, looking surprisingly good-natured about the whole thing.

"You'll do fine with Zahi," Massouf had promised her. "Didn't you used to work with Whitman?"

"Worked with? That would be an overstatement."

"Zahi's the same kind of publicity hound. And the other kind of hound. He is an Egyptian man, if you understand what I mean."

"I understand perfectly what you mean. And in my experience, that behavior transcends national boundaries. Why am I meeting with him?"

"Because he runs archaeology here like a private fief. You dig if Zahi lets you. You publish when Zahi tells you. Or you don't work in Egypt," Massouf said.

"He's also done a great deal of good," Lara countered. "The restoration projects at Saqqara and elsewhere. He's put a real damper on the stolen antiquities trade. And he's been leaning on Berlin to return Nefertiti. More than that, he's been tireless in getting more Egyptians into archaeology, and making it less of a private game for Europeans."

The new discovery was smack between Amenmesse and Tutankhamun, practically in the middle of the main tourist causeway down the center of the Valley. The foundations of the 19th-Dynasty workman's huts were low, meandering walls of small slate-like stones. The great white slab that had first attracted attention framed a vertical shaft into the new discovery.

According to Alistair, however, there had been an earlier clue. Right at the beginning of the decade the Amarna Royal Tombs Project had mapped the valley with ground penetrating radar. Unfortunately the director of the project had been accused in a antiquities smuggling case. Zahi's office had cleared him of all wrong-doing but the potential discoveries had been lost in the shuffle.

Or maybe not.

Unlike a typical tomb, the shaft had not been backfilled. Either that, or tomb robbers had dug their way in ages ago. All that had been required was to shift a single 200-kilogram block before Doctor Schaden had been able to shine a flashlight down into the depths of the tomb. The passage was a good 2/3 filled with the debris of the passing years, but there was enough room for a determined explorer to wriggle their way to whatever had been within.

Which Massouf's friend just might have done — weighing condemnation by the SCA for exploring without permission against what Zahi was even now touting as the possible tomb of Queen Kiya, birth mother of Tutankhamun.

Of course, this didn't explain how Tawfic's crushed body had been found _outside_ the tomb; unless gravity had chosen to reverse at an unfortunate moment and he had fallen back _up_ through the access shaft! Not to mention that someone would have had to shove the massive block back into position across the tomb's mouth after escaping, and the only person Lara had heard of with that habit had worked about eight hundred kilometers to the Northeast. And would be two thousand years old by now.

"Lara Croft!" Zahi turned with a big smile on his face.

Lara walked up to him, noticing the cameras focusing on her as well. "You are just as I pictured you," the Secretary General beamed in approval. Then his face fell in comic dismay. "But where are your guns?"

"Dr. Hawass!" Lara protested. "What kind of an archeologist carries a gun?"

"_Indy_ carries a gun," Zahi pronounced firmly.

And that's when Lara got it. Zahi was famous for leveraging the Indiana Jones mystique, up to wearing his similar-looking signature hat when working (the same hat was available in the museum gift shop). It was all part of his campaign to make archaeology interesting again and bring more tourists to the Giza Plateau. That, and the cult of popularity did hid no harm, either. Lara had heard he even had a line of signature clothing (the explorer-chic of jeans and work-shirts and leather jackets) coming to the Fleet Street shops some day soon. Not to mention the money he made with books, interviews, and his own reality television show.

And that's why he'd bend the rules, and let an outsider like her be part of opening a new tomb in the Valley. Because he was also willing to let a little Lara Croft rub off on him. The Lara Croft of the articles and books (which she'd had ghost-written) before she realized she didn't need the money and the publicity was potentially dangerous for her chosen line of work.

Well, she wasn't above using the tools at hand either, even if one of those tools included letting the cameras linger on her crop top and leather shorts.

"Lady Croft carries a signature pair of matched automatics in the field," he explained to his crew. He mimed a "pow, pow" bit of two-hand shooting. "Is it true," he addressed this to her, "that you fended off a Bengal Tiger once with just your pistols?"

Lara laughed shortly. "The books exaggerate a little." It had actually been a hunting pair, established man-killers both. But she had still felt bad about killing them.

"And discovered a new species of vampire bat in Mexico." He shuddered elaborately. "I _hate_ bats." It was a credible Indiana Jones imitation. "So." He swung back to the gathered audience. "How fortunate is it that Lady Croft is here today! For in the next few minutes, the first human beings in three thousand years are going to enter the chamber within."

Of course they'd already poked cameras in, the first moment enough stones had been cleared to form a hole. But Zahi was playing this up for the crowd.

"Now, you may be thinking that as Doctor Schaden and I enter this tomb, we should be wary of spinning blades and little spears that fly out of the walls if we walk on the wrong stone." He gave a broad wink. "Despite what you may have seen in certain movies, this is not how the New Kingdom builders worked. Tombs were defended by filling the entrances with tons of rock and dirt. And the grave robbers were inside anyhow, almost before the dust had cleared."

And it was at this point he waved Lara forward. "But there is always a first time!" he pronounced with a laugh. "So we bring an expert!" He motioned for a camera to take a close-up on his face, as he composed it to a more serious expression. "Rock falls and other accidents are always a possibility," he added soberly. "These places are very old. People could die. And perhaps this time we see a large round rock roll down a passageway towards us!"

* * *

A wooden ladder had been set up. Otto Schaden, pudgy but fit-looking with a white beard, comfortably dressed in khaki slacks and shirt worn open, led the way. Zahi followed, already sweating under his "Indy" hat, and Lara followed last, ducking under the pulley already set up for artifact retrieval (although in the usual way of things, that would follow days of _in situ_ studies first.)

It was a mere five meter climb down the shaft, then into the opened doorway into the first chamber. Cameras had already revealed the rounded shapes of more than one sarcophagus, blackened by some sort of resin or rot. It was a long clamber down the horizontal passage, as the clear space near the roof was far from high enough to permit anything but hands and knees. And then they were gazing on the contents of the first room themselves.

"This is incredible." Zahi was the first to break the silence. "Congratulations, Otto."

On first glance there were no funerary goods, and no inscriptions decorated the bare walls. At least five coffins loomed, black with resin or perhaps termite damage. Alabaster jars glowed in the lamplight like bones.

"No canopic chest or jars," Dr. Schaden observed. His voice was also hushed in reverence.

"What is your impression, Otto?"

"I think perhaps a preparation room," the older man said. "Those linen bags could be natron. The jars, too, are similar to the embalming supplies found in KV54. But these intact coffins…"

Lara knew what he was thinking. Between the ever more desperate attempts to protect their corporeal remains from grave robbers, and the political shenanigans that resulted in more than one Pharaoh having his remains scattered, his name scratched out, and his tomb re-used by another, mummies had been shifted from resting place to resting place. Sometimes they had ended up tucked into the oddest corners; shifted to unmarked sarcophagi in a tiny bare tomb was not an impossible place to find even so major a figure as Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh.

"Otto, Otto, here!" Zahi said, so excited he could barely form words. In the shadow of the larger coffins was a small, child-sized one. And even through the coating of black it was visibly gold. This was the other side, then, of the man some called "The Pharaoh," and Lara suddenly liked him a lot more. For all the bombast, he really cared so deeply for the past he curated and the discoveries he helped make possible. It reminded her of her own love of archaeological discovery — a love she had sometimes forgot in her recent quests for answers. It was a child-like wonder she saw in Zahi, and she smiled in memory.

* * *

It was the dig at Makimuku; a word the child delighted in saying. Near Nara, it was, a place already filled with wonder. Lara had travelled enough with her parents to have no fear of strangers, and these tiny polite people were always smiling at her. The famed Nara deer frightened her, though; they were scruffy-looking, aggressive animals in search of easy handouts. But the woods were incredible with mist twining about the ancient trees and the tall forests of bamboo. And there was the river festival, with little boats floating down stream, each holding a candle like an entire night sky on the move.

They were staying on site, in temporary buildings as elegant and as complete with every necessity as the tiny efficient Japanese apartments. The previous day she'd visited Todai-ji, where she had marveled at the great cast bronze Buddha, familiarly known as Daibutsu. Today her parents had expected her to sleep in, but instead she was up early to help sift: to sift through a cart full of tailings that was sitting right outside her bedroom.

It was the tiniest flash of green, in the pink morning light that filtered through the surrounding hills. She fished for it with already grubby fingers then, already the professional, reached for a soft bristle brush to gently free it from the matrix of encrusted river sand.

It was the most exquisite little jade pendant. Shaped a bit like Ouroboros, the snake that ate its own tail, and a little more like the magatama beads — half of a Yin/Yang symbol — that had first appeared in the Jomon period, it was both beautiful and obscure. In following months, she and her parents had tried to date it, tried to pin down the period and style, and failed. Given the much more recent period of the subject of their digs, it fell into that peculiar classification that only fringe archaeologists - and non-archaeologists - used; the "OOPArt" or "Out-of-Place Artifact." Meaning it was just as likely something dropped by a recent visitor to Nara, and of no archaeological significance, as it was to belong to the Yayoi period.

But none of that mattered. She strung her little bit of jade on a string and wore it proudly as a necklace. And every time she held it, even in her darkest moments of self-doubt, she remembered the excitement and pride as she had run to her parents clutching it, still in her penguin-print pajamas.

It was her first find. She had been five years old.

* * *

The two senior archaeologists were starting to discuss the best procedures for recording and _in situ_ conservation of the more fragile finds as excavation of KV63 continued. But Lara was feeling something of that sixth sense she'd developed about such places. Her attention went, in time, to the roughly-finished south wall.

"Doctors?" she said. "That's not a shadow."

"Eh?" Zahi saw it first, but soon Otto was nodding as well. "There's a recess there. Possibly shallow. Possibly a window to an adjoining chamber. Our lights don't reach back that far. We'll have to get a ladder in here."

"I can reach it."

They consulted for just a moment. "Nadia will kill us," Zahi said. He meant Nadia Lokma, the Chief Conservator. "Go now and make haste," he told Lara.

She needed no further urging. She leaped lightly to the edge and pulled herself up until she could look within the narrow shadowed rectangle. "It seems to go through," she reported.

"Go," Zahi said. "I will follow."

"I won't," Doctor Schaden said. "My surgery. Please, be gentle. Don't let the conservators be more angry than they will be already."

Lara pulled up. She could barely wriggle into the gap. She didn't believe the others would make it until this opening was enlarged. She triggered her light, but already she could tell something was different. The stone here was smooth, exceptionally flat even by the high standards of Egyptian stone dressers. The mail-box slot continued for ten meters or so, then opened up. The change in the reflected sound of her own breathing told her that this was a new chamber, a much larger one. Or, at least, a deeper one.

She stood. And then realized her mistake. The ledge she had reached had but a narrow flat spot, with the rest both polished and slanting sharply down. Her boots were already sliding down the incline. She swiveled, casting her light around in a desperate arc, and as the black edge all too rapidly approached, crouched and then leaped out into space…

* * *

"Enter!" Hammond shuffled the papers back into the folder and closed it, turning it face down on the desk so not even the label would be visible to his visitor. A habit born of too many classified documents: this particular folder concerned the efforts to get a soda machine or two installed into the lower levels. Which was more complicated than it might be, considering it put into conflict the need of the vendor to personally tend and restock their machines, and the needs of the Air Force to keep random civilians far from the Gate Room.

"Thank you, General." Doctor Janet Frasier was in efficiency mode, a white lab coat over her Air Force blues. "You wanted a report on our progress in finding a defense to that gas of Hathor's."

"I thought we agreed we were never going to speak of that incident again," a voice whined from behind her.

"Do you mind, Colonel?" Hammond was good-humored, but he meant it.

"General, please let him stay. He was one of the victims, after all."

Colonel Jack O'Neill drifted the rest of the way into the room. As usual, he was wearing fatigues — General Hammond didn't think he'd seen O'Neill in Service Dress once, outside of funerals and promotions.

"I've spoken with Teal'c about this," Janet Frasier continued her report as if no interruption had occurred. "He says this sort of attack is not uncommon. Some Goa'uld are even known for it; Setesh and Heru-ur, among others. The source is usually synthetic; it appears Hathor was either using a hidden mechanism, or had genetically modified herself in order to project a weaker form of the usual gas."

"In either case, eww."

"And?" General Hammond prompted.

"Well, Sir, my first line of enquiry seems to have met an impasse," the Chief Medical Officer of Stargate Command said, a little displeased with herself. "We need to recreate the drug before we can formulate an antidote. My belief is that it is an organic extract. Doctor Jackson suggests the Goa'uld may have made use of medicinal plants, possibly genetically engineered, that are no longer native to this world."

"Would an extract work as well, Doctor?"

"Again, eww."

This time Hammond gave him a look that said that O'Neill was not getting away with any behavior. He would be permitted only so much, and no more. Then he turned back to his Chief Medical Officer in expectation.

"Yes, of course," Janet said, only the look in her eyes revealing the impatience. "If you happen to capture Hathor, or Setesh, then by all means let me know and I will obtain a sample for analysis. In any case," she continued so smoothly it almost hid the way she was putting the train back on the tracks, "the contextual evidence provided by Teal'C and Doctor Jackson suggests this is but one compound of a large interrelated family. There may be useful medicinal drugs to be discovered here as well."

"Interesting, Doctor," Hammond said. "Please keep me posted."

"General!" a new voice came at that moment. "Sir!"

"Well hello, Carter," the Colonel greeted the latest. "Come to join the party?"

Hammond sighed. "This is an office, not a train station."

"Sir!" Samantha Carter blinked. "It's happened again. A big one this time; almost thirty minutes!"

* * *

Lara leaped. And her fingers closed on a narrow rail high in the polished stone walls. She gasped, now completely aware of the pit that opened up beneath her. This was most unlike the New Kingdom. "This is getting interesting," she said to herself.

At least getting back would be easy. But as she'd come this far, it made just as much sense to go forward. She traversed, then, hand by hand. The sheer stone was too slick to get a good grip for her boots, so in violation of all accepted practice of rock climbing she was suspended by fingertips only. Fortunately, she had strong fingers.

At last she was past the central pit and could drop back down. This new chamber was flat and polished and unusually square. It was as if, three thousand years ago, someone had told the stone-cutters above to stop work just as they were smoothing the chamber now filled with embalming supplies, and proceeded to cut a geometrically perfect inner tomb in secret within the other.

A skittering sound alerted her. A giant scorpion, almost luminous in a pale waxy yellow. Lara recognized the general species at once. A deathstalker, one of the most poisonous scorpions of North Africa and the Middle East. Except this one was a troglobiont, completely blind, near pigment-less. And of excessive size, especially considering how little food must filter down here.

She could see the sensitive antenna quiver. Down here in still air, it hardly needed eyes to find her. And it was hunting. Nor was it alone; Lara could hear the subtle rustling and skittering sounds coming from other parts of the room as well.

Now Lara regretted not having her guns. She could only move quickly, and keep them from closing in on her. And that meant she had little leisure to explore the hidden chamber.

It was bare of decoration, save for a ring of metal seemingly inset into the floor; a decoration complicated but geometric, with no recognizable symbols or any other artistic meaning apparent. The chamber itself was almost as bare of content; a single canopic jar, with the seal broken and lying nearby, and a low stone block marked along the top with highly simplified hieroglyphics.

Lara studied the latter quickly. They formed no phrases, instead seeming to be short words in individual groups. She was unsurprised to see the falcon, once again. The dust had been disturbed here, and not that many years ago. She reached out to brush off the falcon…and light glowed from deep within the stone, lighting up the deeply incised lines.

"The falcon…but then could this be…but is it a mechanism?" Lara's mind was flashing. She reached out again, more deliberately, touching several symbols in order. At the last moment she caught herself, and instead of following the order that would spell out "Horus," she chose the alternate arrangement that appeared to spell out "Hodur."

An invisible seam opened and a tray slid out from one side.

The deathstalkers were very close now. Lara stamped one boot, giving them a moment's pause. Then she scooped up the black snake-like object within the hidden tray before leaping to the top of the stone herself. One last look, and she was jumping towards the same ledge she had followed on the way in. As straightforward as it was, she wanted to complete that traverse before the scorpions chose to follow her.

* * *

Otto Schaden had already retreated to the surface by the time Lara wriggled back through the narrow slot in the stone wall. Zahi was visibly relieved to see her unharmed.

"Doctor Hawass." Lara spoke more formally than her usual brusque manner. "There is a second chamber. It goes back roughly twenty meters, but there is a dangerous drop-off directly behind the window. The end of the chamber is almost unadorned and does not fit the pattern of anything we've seen in the Valley before. There are also poisonous insects in the chamber. I chose to remove one artifact for study now rather than wait for the steps necessary to safely explore the chamber properly."

She brought the thing out. It was a compact z-shaped object in a dark resin-like material, looking vaguely like a serpent folded tightly on to its own tail. Her fingers found the indent she had discovered before; with an mechanical click and a clearly electronic whine it unfolded sharply like a cobra rearing back ready to strike.

"What, what? What is this thing…you found this thing?" Zahi stumbled back. Then in a flash the famous Zahi temper was on him. "Why do you show this thing to me, this child's toy!"

"Doctor, it is not a toy!"

"I know it is not a toy!" The senior archaeologist made the 180 without the slightest change in his angry tirade. "It is a thing, a thing which it does not belong! Why do you bring this out here, why to this serious dig do you find such things!"

Lara found herself getting cross in return. This is what her father had faced, when he dared go beyond the limits of the accepted archaeological reconstructions. "It is real, Doctor, it is dangerous, and it is part of our past!"

"It is not our past!" he shouted. "It is their past! Parasites! Ancient Astronauts! This does not belong!" He waved his arms in short, jerky motions, indicating the contents of the tomb. "This is distraction! I tell you this, people come up to me, they say, Doctor Hawass, they say, is it true the pyramids were built by aliens? And I say to them, you are stupid for saying this. The pyramids are just a pile of rocks. We do not need aliens to help us make a pile of rocks!"

His hands scrabbled, came up with a fragment of a delicate burial mask. They must have uncovered it while Lara was in the next chamber. "See this here, this thing of beauty. My people did that! Egyptian people did that! We created the art, the language, the way to water plants. Look here, we know the names of the architects who built at Giza and Saqqara. We see their statues, we see how they learned to build, slowly, over the years, making mistakes but learning. Human learning!"

He gave a sort of convulsive shrug — oddly compact, like all his gestures — and started again in a voice which was lower, but no less angry. "In France, in the south of France, is a place that is called Lascaux. On the walls of the cave are paintings and these paintings are seventeen _thousand_ years old. And you know how they paint? They spread bear fat on the stone, then they blow, with a little tiny reed, they blow powdered pigment into it like a little tiny airbrush that is seventeen thousand years old. But this is the thing I want to say. They find the pigments. They find the colors the artist was using."

Zahi sat, suddenly. His voice had gone distant, taking on that awe one felt in coming to grips with the distant past. "You think, here is a caveman, speaks like Tarzan maybe, he goes into the cave and he dabs a little here and there because he isn't really _thinking._ Not like we do. But here it is; they find these pigments and they are lined up, in order. They are _arranged_. They are _chosen._ He thinks as well as you or I. Maybe better than some of those people up there." He gestured towards the tomb entrance.

"Humans are smart. When you say we need aliens to tell us how to build, how to paint, how to water crops, you are saying our ancestors are children. Or maybe you are saying Egyptians are children, are idiots, who need outsiders to tell them how to feed themselves. And that is why I am so angry about these things like this you show me and the fools who want to see flying saucers and spacemen in helmets in everywhere where there is serious archaeology being done. My life's work is to show the past, our Egyptian past, the past of all of us. It is to be proud to be a human being. These aliens…they are just distraction."

Lara was silent for a time. "They are also a part of our past," she said at last, quietly.

"And one day we will add them to our knowledge. Not tear down everything we know and put them up instead as some sort of new gods responsible for everything good." He also paused for a time. "Put that away," he said. "Are there other OOPArt in that chamber?" he asked, simply.

"Yes." Lara was as straight-forward.

"We will proceed as normal then," Zahi made a show of straightening up, brushing off his jeans. "No more adventures. This season is over anyhow. Too hot to dig. We will record and conserve, and unbury the rest of this chamber. It will be many years before anyone needs to look at the second chamber." His eyes brightened in excitement again. "And we have seven coffins. Seven! Perhaps one still holds Queen Kiya's remains!"


	5. Chapter 5: Headhunters

Sorry it took so long. I got intrigued by the anthropological implications and almost set the whole chapter on 1138. And would you believe it took the blog of a Norwegian tourist to convince me that there were better story-telling alternatives than sending goons to Lara's hotel room? Pity it also meant telling yet another scene in flashback…

Incidentally, le Riad sounds really nice, and I'd totally want to stay there myself. I hope they will forgive me "telling a story" and including them in this fiction.

* * *

Unnamed: 14-23-02-12-24-36

* * *

"No, Daniel." O'Neill planted his elbows on the mahogany conference table.

"But they are a fascinating culture! Completely isolated stone-age remnants. They could tell us so much about the origins of writing, music; about the development of social structures…"

"If you didn't notice, Daniel, they weren't exactly talkative."

"Gentlemen?" General Hammond said dryly. "May we resume the debrief?"

The PXX-1138 stargate had opened on to a wet, dense, equatorial forest. The MALP had detected no signs of civilization. They might have passed up on it entirely if they hadn't noticed the area around the stargate had been kept clear.

SG1 went through that same day. The heat was stifling, and there was a lovely smell of rotting vegetation and strong jungle perfumes overlaid with a not-at-all-subtle smell of decay. The air was still and stagnant, and only the buzzing of innumerable insects broke the silence.

"We don't know this was cleared by humans, you know," Colonel O'Neill said, cradling his P90 in a way that looked nonchalant — but his eyes never ceased scanning the dense foliage surrounding them. "It could have been munched clean by some kind of animal."

"Giant caterpillars?"

"Carter, have you been staying up all night watching the Sci-Fi Channel again?"

"Well, we won't find anything by standing around here." Daniel Jackson was already walking towards the edge of the clearing. He'd only gotten ten feet before Colonel O'Neill spoke.

"Stop." The Colonel's voice was quiet, but they'd heard that tone before. He barely moved his head to take in the fourth member of their party. "Teal'c?"

The giant nodded in agreement. He had also shifted weight, subtly; although the staff still rested on the ground, it could be employed at a moment's notice. "We are being observed."

"Hello? Hell-ooo!" Daniel cupped his hands around his mouth. "We come in peace." He looked back at O'Neill and Teal'c. "They already know we're here," he shrugged.

"Carter, Teal'c." O'Neill gestured with little more than a nod of the head. The two designated team members moved out to either side of the gate and crouched, finding the best cover they could. Samantha Carter was closest to the DHD, ready to dial home if necessary.

Daniel waited — he was learning — then resumed his slow walk forwards. His hands were empty. O'Neill narrowed his eyes but accepted it; they'd run this routine before. He followed several paces behind. His own weapon was up; the sling made it very convenient for firing from the hip, and at these ranges you hardly needed even iron sights.

A bush rustled. Daniel angled towards it. O'Neill was almost but not completely certain that noise hadn't been an accident, though. He stopped moving, and started scanning. Even then he didn't quite detect the flanker that rose silently to just high enough to train a short spear on him.

The spearman all but burst into flame as Teal'c's staff blast caught him full on.

O'Neill had only a moment to think it through. He swiveled on the balls of his feet and hosed the bushes behind Carter with a long burst of P90 fire. A choked cry from the bushes told him he'd guessed right. Ambush! The activity towards the front was meant to draw them into the kill zone, while flankers came up behind.

Short spears were slashing out of the heavy, concealing foliage, moving fast enough to flash across the clearing entirely, or spang into the gate itself. Daniel was still upright, staring at the fallen spearman, and a spear embedded in his pack with a solid thunk. He crouched, then, like the rest of the team. Not that it was going to help much. There was no good cover in the clearing other than the gate itself. It had been cleared all right; clear fields of fire.

"Woomera!" Daniel hissed across to O'Neill as the spears flew overhead.

"What, they have rockets, too?" the Colonel hissed back.

"No, woomera. Like atlatl," the archeologist said. Two more spears buried themselves in the dirt between them.

"We're sitting ducks out here," the Colonel said. "Teal'c, watch our six!" he raised his voice. "We're going to try to break through on the left. Daniel, you're with me."

"Wait!" the archaeologist hissed.

"Sorry, but it has to be this way."

"Not what I meant." Daniel shook his head, exasperated with himself as he tried to get the words out. "You saw that guy Teal'c shot. Stone-age. Tribal culture. Did you notice his scars? Endemic warfare. Like Borneo or Papua New Guinea."

"Headhunters, right. I like my head right where it is, Daniel." He raised his voice again. "Carter?"

"Ready, sir!" the young major called back.

"Oh, for…! Jack, lend me your pistol."

O'Neill gave the archeologist a look, then pulled out his back-up, checked the safety, then tossed it across the path. Daniel racked the action to chamber the first round. "They don't think like an army," the archaeologist said. "They'll panic. We can drive them away from the gate." He flicked off the safety, then transferred it to his off hand as he readied his own pistol.

O'Neill was impressed despite himself. It took a lot to drive Daniel to violence, but when push came to shove, he'd shove with the best of them. "Okay," he said after a long moment. "We do it your way." He called back to the others. "We're making a stand here. Teal'c, suppressive fire. Carter, start dialing the moment we get clear." He looked back across at his companion. He smiled thinly. "Ready?"

Daniel nodded. Then in one smooth move he rolled to his feet, both pistols out. It lacked something for accuracy, but it did make an impressive amount of noise. Not, however, as much as the short, controlled bursts from the Colonel's P90.

Carter was adding to the din. After one shot and a moment's contemplation, Teal'c switched his aim and began demonstrating the principle of "crown fire" to their surrounding attackers. The volume of return fire dropped off very quickly after that. Noise and cries from the underbrush described a hurried — if not panicked - retreat.

The action on both of Daniel's pistols locked back as he emptied the magazines. He turned, caught Jack's eye…and a last wobbling spear throw cut across his arm.

The archaeologist's eyes widened in shock. "Come along, Daniel," O'Neill said. He heard the "Kawoosh" from the gate. "Our ride's here."

Daniel staggered. "Odd," he said. "No tree frogs…" And his eyes rolled up. The Colonel caught him up even as he fell, getting a shoulder under, and quickly staggered after the others back through the gate.

* * *

"And a good thing you only got a little of that stuff into you," O'Neill continued as they sat around the large wooden briefing table. "Doctor Frasier was able to patch you right up." He nodded to the SGC's Chief Medical Officer. "Lucky that guy Woomera jumped the gun on his buddies."

The archaeologist opened his mouth. Closed it. Blinked. "Ritual warfare. Xenophobia isn't sustainable at tribal size. Exogamy is necessary, and that often manifests as trophy-taking. So you get an honor culture, with each man out for himself."

"I get it," O'Neill said. "No officers. Just a bunch of guys. No reason for them to stick to any battle where most of them would get killed off."

Teal'c was troubled. "That ambush would have been very effective against Jaffa," he grudgingly admitted. "Jaffa would have pursued. They would also have fought as individuals, each out to prove himself a better warrior than the others."

"I wish…" the archaeologist pushed his glasses back. "I wish we hadn't had to do that."

"Their choice," O'Neill said. "They jumped us, we shot back until they withdrew."

"You got lucky," Doctor Frasier said then. "Those spear points carried a neurotoxin of the alkaloid group, similar to curare but otherwise unfamiliar to me. We're still studying it. Doctor Jackson was only exposed to traces of it, otherwise I would be reluctant to release him even long enough for this debriefing."

She looked around at the exploration team. "Any one of you could have been exposed to enough to have killed you within minutes. Even you, Teal'c; I am not so sure your symbiote would have been able to tackle this stuff."

"Thank you, Doctor," Hammond spoke then. "Anything further for us now?"

"No," Janet smiled thinly. "Just try to be careful out there, okay?"

"She has a point, you know," Daniel said after the Chief Medical Officer had left. "We've been lucky. We've been lucky a lot. Sometimes I wonder how we've managed to get through all the things we've been through without getting killed."

"Well, there's an argument that we haven't," Samantha Carter mused.

"What!"

"Oh!" She sat up straighter. "I wasn't hinting anything. Just physicist humor. Have you ever heard of Quantum Immortality?"

"Um, no." O'Neill was dead-pan. Daniel just looked confused.

"Well, it's trivial, but entertaining. If you accept the Many-Worlds hypothesis, then there is a near-infinite number of alternate dimensions, many of which have only the subtlest differences from our own. So, any time you did something that had a chance of you getting killed, there's some universe in which you _did_ get killed."

"Un, huh."

"So that means you are, purely by chance, the one that is in the universe where you didn't get killed. If you have a consciousness, it is by definition restricted to only those universes where you didn't get killed. It's really a sort of personal version of Brandon Carter's formulation of the Strong Anthropic Principle…"

O'Neill looked aside at Daniel Jackson. "I find it is best just to nod at this point," he said. Daniel's eyes were looking unusually glassy. "Um…I think we'd better take you back to Doctor Frasier now."

"All right," General Hammond said, putting the papers back in his folder. "Dismissed." He stood. "I'm glad you all made it back safely. I'm sorry this mission wasn't more productive."

"I wouldn't exactly say that," O'Neill also stood. "I finally got a chance to fight in the shade."

Hammond chuckled at that. After O'Neil had left, half propping-up the now sagging archaeologist, Samantha Carter had to ask. "Sir? Shade?"

"Herodotus, writing about Thermopylae," the General said. "He attributes the quip to a soldier named Dienekes. After another man complained the Persian arrows were so numerous they blotted out the sun, Dienekes replied that it would be nice to have some shade to fight in."

"I see," Teal'c was approving. "I would seek out this Herodotus and hear more of such stories from him."

"We'll have you quoting the classics in no time, son," Hammond said heartily. "'Sing, oh Goddess, of the anger of Achilles…'"

* * *

Cairo: 30°3′N 31°14′E

* * *

"Thé à la menthe," Lara smiled. "S'il vous plait." The "lingua franca" here was actually Egyptian Arabic, but French got used in a few places, in particular those with fine white table linen. Plus Muhammad, her waiter, enjoyed having a chance to practice.

She was relaxing on the terrace of Le Riad, a luxury hotel in a charming Fatimad-style building in the mostly Islamic "Old Cairo" quarter of the city, facing the imposing Ottoman houses of Beit El Sehemy. Her dress for the evening was loose top and pants in a silky white charmeuse, with her hair in a wrap.

She had one of the suites here. It took only a moment to reject the garish purple of the "Ottoman" suite and she had had enough of Pharaohs. So that left "Bedouin." Which was elegant and comfortable and dressed with expensive artwork as well as state-of-the-art toiletries, and reminded her almost not at all of her travel companions on her fruitless attempt to uncover the "Phantom City" deep in the uncharted wastes of the Rub' al Khali.

There was a difference between being alone, and being left alone. Lara was comfortable with the solitude of the harsh, remote places she explored. But she also preferred being up here, with the street noise and incessant car horns drifting up (Cairo rarely slept) and the murmur of conversation around her, to trying to think while alone in her — admittedly palatial - rooms.

She sipped her tea and reviewed the notes in her journal. What did she actually know? She knew that a chamber dedicated to Horus, the falcon-headed god of war and protection, had been hidden beneath a neolithic structure out in the Libyan Desert near Tripoli. It appeared to have once hosted three falcon-themed jars or containers. One seemed to have travelled around the Mediterranean, used alternately by major figures on either side of the Battle of Lepanto, and vanished at last into some hidden treasure-house of the Knights of Malta: or perhaps on to the now-vanished Cabinet of Curiosities of Rudolph II. Eventually, it found its way into the hands of eccentric Egyptologist Catherine Langford, and was stolen from an auction house in London with Libyan aid.

The apparent interest of Libyan strongman Colonel Gadaffi, and the presence of his personal troop of hand-sworn bodyguards, the all-female Amazonian Guard, at Senam Bu-Samida indicated the Colonel knew very well of the Horus jars. The inference is that he himself held the other surviving one. Now, this wasn't the first time she had discovered some artifact of power surfacing in the modern world, nor the first time it had been in the hands of someone unscrupulous. She put a stop to that when she could, but her sights were usually higher.

In following back the connection to Catherine Langford, she had become aware of a massive disk of dark metal that had been unearthed from what appeared to have been intentional burial by First Dynasty Egyptians. The disk had been spirited out of Egypt before the start of the Second World War, and from the evidence of her own encounter in Arlington, was still being protected by some equally mysterious agency of the American government.

What, however, was the connection to Horus? And to the recently-opened tomb in the Valley of Kings, with the serpent-shaped (and very much out-of-place) artifact she had recovered there, not to mention the mysterious death of a young archaeologist, and the disappearance of another?

In her rooms, earlier, she had put Alister and Zip to work filling in some of Tawfik's background. The bookworm research assistant and the hooked-in hacker were good foils for each other, and between them accomplished much more than they could working separately.

"Tawfik Yasser and Carlos Mendez were adaptable helpers for that group that did that ground penetrating radar thing on the tombs. You should see the images, Lara. Cool stuff. Hey, Alister, what's an 'Adaptable helper?'"

"It means a shovelbum, Zip," the research assistant replied in his cultured Public School accent.

"Alister." Lara's voice was flat.

"Right, sorry. I meant, field research assistants." It was generally unsaid within the field, but it was understood that "shovelbum" could only be used (in self-deprecating fashion) by those who had paid their dues behind the shovel. Alister was of the other thread of archaeology both classic and modern; his domain was books and papers and he avoided fieldwork at all cost.

"Tawfik was found dead on the surface, but Carlos vanished the same night," Alister informed his employer. "He showed up months later in Quintana Roo, now calling himself Juan Carlos Halcon, in the middle of a shady deal concerning a newly unearthed crystal skull. Lara, he's a nighthawk, a _huecheros._ One of the black archaeologists."

That is, one of the antiquities traffickers Zahi Hawass hated so much. What had he discovered that made him stray so quickly from the academic path? Something akin to the serpent-shaped artifact she had found across that deadly pit?

Lara couldn't help feeling there was a connection, something behind all of this, something that tied together the Horus jars and the "Gate of Stars" and her discoveries in KV63. Something that explained the link between an Egyptian god and a minor figure from Norse mythology, and explained why a daring scribe would risk everything to warn the literate reader against perfidy by his own god.

This wasn't something that had ended with the Battle of Lepanto. This was something that was still out there, waiting to unleash who knew what terror on the modern world. Of this, she was oddly certain.

But then, experience was a bit of a guide.

Experience had also been her friend earlier this day. She had arranged to bring the serpent artifact to the reclusive Yuen Sen, an expert in an eclectic assortment of ancient cultures linked only by the way they all seemed to deliver up tantalizing glimpses into a much stranger world than what was normally reported in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology.

She had barely hit the street outside her hotel before the first cab came drifting near, with the blithe mutual recklessness of pedestrian and automobile that marked the big cities in this part of the world. It was an aging black-and-white Peugeot 530, of course, one of the unmetered cabs that in other cities might be called a gypsy cab.

The cab honked at her. Lara smiled. "Mokattam!" she said into the open window.

"Mokattam City, 20 LE!" the cabbie shouted back.

Lara shook her head. "Mokattam Village," she said.

That was a camel of a different color. "60 LE!" the cabbie said immediately.

"_Maleesh,_" Lara replied, and turned away. The day was nice, if typically hot, dusty, and wreathed with the Cairo smog that startled so many tourists. She'd walk until she found a metered cab. Not that she minded the price, but she wasn't prepared to continue haggling through the length of the trip. At least on the metered cabs, your worst problem was the driver finding the longest possible route to your actual destination.

A woman traveling alone expected to get a certain amount of attention. In Cairo, that attention was loud, but often inventive. Among the cries of "_Sukar!_" and "_Mozza!_" were boasts like "I have two hundred camels! Marry me!" And then there was the too-honest young man who cried out, "I have only two camels!"

And it seemed to be a thing to address Europeans with what were clearly intended to be flattering references to famous personalities. "Sophia!" cried one man. "Sophia Loren, look this way!"

"Angelina, I love you!" said another. Angelina? Did he mean the American actress that had so recently appeared as Queen Olympias in a major film about Alexander the Great? Lara had to wonder. The movie had not done well, particularly among historians.

Of course it was impossible to say how much the come-ons were after her body, and how much they were after the Almighty Dollar (or in her case, the Almighty British Pound.) This was always a problem around the tourist areas, with mobs of guides pushing to "volunteer" their services. Zahi Hawass had finally kicked them off the Giza Plateau for frightening the tourists — a move that had not made him popular in some quarters.

At last she found one of the newer white cabs, and flagged it down. "Manshiyat Naser," she said into the window. The driver might as well know exactly what he was getting into. He shrugged eloquently and started the meter. She stepped gracefully into the back seat.

Manshiyat Naser ward was a sprawling slum to the East of central Cairo, over five square kilometers of broken-down buildings and narrow twisting streets. Running water and working electricity were rarities, unemployment was rampant. The dismal picture impressed even Lara, who had been in the favela of Rio, and the emerald mines of Muzo, Colombia.

She was heading further than the cab was willing to go; into "Garbage City," the quarter at the far southern end of Manshiyat Naser where it pushed up against Mokattam Hill. As close as it was to the luxury residences, the geography — the sheer cut-off cliff of the plateau — cut it off from the rest of the city to make it a lonely cul-de-sac.

It was as she alighted from the cab that experience first alerted her to the tail. Two men, at least. Lara smiled grimly. They must have had fun trying to follow her through Cairo's traffic.

In general Cairo was one of the safer major cities of the world when it came to violent crime. If the underworld here had a speciality, it was trafficking. The stolen antiquities market was massive. But Cairo's underworld also traded in less savory goods. Cocaine, heroin and Ecstasy of course. Human trafficking (including the particularly abhorrent "Summer Marriages") and even organ trafficking.

But that didn't mean robbery didn't happen. Most was snatch-and-grab, by small disorganized groups of young men. The two behind her, Lara reflected, looked the type but the fact that they had tailed her instead of going for an easier target of opportunity suggested darker motives.

So she let them close in. Even in a city where families displaced by poverty — or one of the frequent earthquakes — had found themselves moving into their own mausoleum, there were vacant buildings. Lara chose one at random to duck into.

And suddenly they were inside with her. "Take your picture, _sukar,_" said one of the men.

"You have a light?" asked the other. Experienced muggers didn't jump out ahead of you and flash a knife. They played nice until they were within striking distance. And knives they had, too. Pity predators would always insist on attacking prey larger than themselves.

Lara had just come up on the balls of her feet when she spotted the third man. This was not good. She could take these two down, but not before he had a chance to shoot. Take a weapon off one, but knives were lousy for ranged work. It also made it far too clear that they didn't intend robbery; they had come prepared to kill.

So be it.

Lara swung her purse. It was a heavy purse, and she was a lot stronger (and faster) than anyone had a right to expect. That knocked the polo shirt back, and meant she could concentrate on the vivid purple tee. She ducked under his knife arm (what kind of idiot used the overhand grip, in this day and age?) and wrenched his arm around behind him, turning him as a human shield towards the gat man.

Sound behind her. Ralph Laurent was already getting up. She shoved purple towards the pistolero and dropped flat. The knife slash over her head didn't whistle, but it should have. Now pistol was shooting, and she started rolling. This was not going well.

Her purse. The seam had opened in the impact and the artifact she'd brought to show Yuen Sen was lying on the floor beside it. Lara continued her roll, two bullets adding no real damage to the already terrible state of the floor as Mr. 45 proved he hadn't digested the lesson on leading his targets yet.

Alligator took a step back in surprise as she came up on to one knee with a strange weapon-like object in her hand. That gave her plenty of time to hit the first contact that unfolded the snake, then the second one that she had been carefully avoiding ever since she'd noticed it.

The artifact from KV63 made an electronic spitting sound and blue-white lighting lit up the room. It wreathed around the man with the gun. He jerked once, then fell over. Now she knew what the thing did. She wasted no time swinging in short arcs to cover the other two, and triggering it twice more.

"You can smoke now if you like," she told the one who had asked for a light. He did seem to be smoking, at least around the edges. However, he was still alive. All three were. Apparently she'd discovered an ancient Egyptian stun-gun.

"I really should have left one of them conscious," she said aloud. "But then, they probably didn't know anything anyhow."

They certainly didn't know much about committing murder. It rankled, knowing someone had priced her this cheaply. Of course, they were hardly likely to repeat the mistake.

* * *

No-one else harassed her as she completed her trip into Garbage City. By contrast this part of the ward was downright industrious, and despite the piled garbage everywhere (to be fair, garbage was often piled about the streets of Cairo proper as well) it seemed cleaner than the rest of Manshiyat Naser.

They weren't exactly popular with the greater ward, either. Garbage City was the recyclers and de-facto garbage disposal for most of Cairo. Unlike the Muslim majority, the Zabbaleen were over ninety percent Coptic Christian, which permitted them to keep the pigs that formed (along with ducks, and many, many industrious fingers) the machinery of the most efficient recycling operation in the world. Neither pigs nor Christians made them popular neighbors, but both paled against the simple fact that the recycling trucks (once donkey carts, but Nasser had put his foot down at that quaint medievalism in the modern city he was attempting to create) had but one major route to get from their collection rounds to here; right through the middle of Manshiyat Naser.

Yuen Sen was an ageless, all but unlined, entirely bald man with an engaging grin. The busy workers around him all seemed to be women, young women, although there was a number of children as well.

"But where else would I want to be?" he grinned. "Everything in the city comes through here eventually. Any archaeologist knows, you can learn more of a culture from their midden than you can from their treasury."

"I suspect you'll have to wait a while to see anything of Tutankhamen's in Cairo's municipal waste," Lara said dryly.

"I take the long view," Yuen retorted with good humor. "The Pharaohs are come and gone, but in time, Mubarak will also end up in the dust-bin of history. And we will collect the detritus of his rule. This place," he waved his hand towards the rest of the quarter, "is an economic miracle, an ecologic miracle. In the west they recycle twenty, thirty percent. Here we achieve ninety! Ninety percent recycling!"

"Via intensive labor in unsanitary conditions," Lara couldn't help pointing out. "I'm sorry, I'm being a poor guest."

"And I a poor host." Yuen invited her in at that point. There was of course no air conditioning, and the smell and smoke of burning garbage was almost indescribable. He served her hot black tea on china ware that, from the pride in which he presented it, must have been among the treasures rescued from the scrap heaps. "So now," he said when they were comfortable, "Let us see this thing."

Lara produced the serpent-shaped artifact. "Be careful," she warned. "It appears to be some sort of energy weapon."

"You discovered this much?"

"A couple of nice gentlemen volunteered to help me test it," she explained.

"Well, well," the eccentric expert declared. He held it up, hefted it for weight, inspected how light fell along the decorative grooves. "These grooves," he said. "This decoration. It looks Old Kingdom, but it isn't. The closest analog to these curves would be papyrus leaves, but this isn't such a depiction, not even an abstracted one. It is just pattern. Most unusual."

"I noticed that. And the shape?"

"Yes, the Uraeus."

"A depiction of the Goddess Wadjet. The cobra shape, the symbol of divine authority that appears on a Pharaoh's crown or mask." He pondered. "I remember a line in the Book of the Dead, which describes the uraeus as the spitting fire on the enemies of the Pharaoh from the eye of the goddess."

"But there is no Ra connection in this artifact. No sun disc, at least."

"Very mysterious. I am tempted to say; this is not a product of early Egyptian religious beliefs. This is instead the creation of someone else in response to some of those beliefs."

"A fake, you mean?"

"No, not quite in the sense you mean. This may or may not be Egyptian. One thing I can tell you, however; it is very, very old."

"I could have told you that. I found it in a chamber that hadn't seen daylight in three thousand years. Wait — how can you tell how old it is?" Yuen Sen was regarded as having nearly supernatural powers when it came to understanding unique artifacts, but this was a bit beyond belief.

"Because I have seen something like it before. A mention, a brief mention. In a papyrus fragment that others have declared a fake or an ancient flight of fantasy."

"Well." Lara stood. "I'd very much like to see your materials on that papyrus, then. Send it to me when you've unearthed it. Ah…do you even have internet here?"

"I will have the boy start pedaling." Yuen Sen winked. "It is amazing what you can cobble up with an old bicycle and a few small motors and gears. Unfortunately, he must pedal for four hours for each twenty minutes he plays those computer games of his, and he does enjoy those games…"

* * *

Lara was still smiling at her memory of the meeting with the inimitable Yuen Sen when a stranger stepped up to her table.

"You know," she said, "Muhammad got fifty pounds from me to make sure no lonely men just happened to find the one empty chair on this terrace."

"I bribed him a hundred," the man said in good humor. He was dressed to the nines in an off-white linen suit of old-fashioned cut, small wire-frame glasses and even a straw boater, which he had of course removed. Lara gave him an approving look-over, although she carefully hid all expression from her face. It couldn't hurt a girl to window-shop, even if she had no intention of buying.

"He'll make a tidy profit," she observed. The waiter was honest to a fault, enough that she was sure he'd attempt to return her own bribe to her after this. "You paid for a table; now sit and at least pretend to enjoy it. Have some mint tea."

"I will," the man said. He sat with good grace. "But I won't be long. An acquaintance of mine — it would be too much to call him a friend — wishes to invite you to meet tomorrow, during the day. He has written a time and place on this card."

He presented it. Lara immediately flipped the card over. She wasn't entirely surprised by what she found, printed in a simple, severe black.

The falcon.


	6. Chapter 6: The Horus Draught

Those who know the mythology of SG1 have probably figured out Carlos' secret by now. Please don't tell the others, not yet.

The first game I played through was Tomb Raider: Underworld. That's my Lara (plus a fair bit of the movie.) Hard-edged, elegant, a thrill-seeker, a professional. And this chapter, I'm going to see if I can't find a little of her softer side. Or at least sow some self-doubt.

As usual, I imply no rights to any properties commercial or otherwise, and intend no criticisms in the fictionalized presentations of any real cultures, people, or places.

* * *

Cairo: 30°3′N 31°14′E

* * *

"I'm digging in the dirt, to find the places I got hurt…"

It dawned on Lara just how clever the chosen meeting place was when her cab reached the private bridge of Grand Hyatt Cairo. The sweeping curve of the hotel, and the shining tower beside it — barely a year old — sat proudly at the northern tip of Al-Roda island, which nestled along the shore of the Nile as it passed through Cairo. Armed guards from the hotel stopped every car, and guests were further greeted by a walk-through metal detector. It formed part of what was like a gated community diffused across Cairo; the various mechanisms the held the monied and the foreign visitors apart from the unwashed horde.

It also made a very effective neutral ground. The Falcon had no doubt set those thugs on her, and he had to be aware that she'd figured that out. So it was smart thinking to meet in a place where a third party held the upper hand. And all the guns.

On the ground floor of the Hyatt was one of that high-profile chain of music-themed clubs and diners; the Hard Rock Cafe Cairo. Rock music played loudly over the sound system; at the moment it was canned, and appeared to be Peter Gabriel. Above the main dining area hung a 1957 Cadillac once belonging to President Nasser — presumably not the armored one he'd had made by Hess &amp; Eisenhardt. Also among their collection, apparently, was a jacket from ZZ Top and a body suit with strategic tassels once worn by the pop singer Madonna.

The cover was a hundred pounds — Egyptian, that is, which worked out to around ten pounds sterling. It had probably been a mistake to tie their currency so tightly to the American dollar. But then, Lara felt unfamiliar stirrings of nationalism at her own people's refusal to go over to the Euro. That cover didn't include bar, of course, and the rates were considerably higher during _iftar._

The man who wished to see her was dressed in the same conservative western-style clothes of half the developed world; slacks and a button-down white shirt. His sole concession to style was a closely-tailored leather jacket.

Lara herself was wearing what she thought of privately as "shovelbum chic"; a peasant blouse with a little neck embroidery over twill slacks with walking boots and a sun hat. But they were still overdressed by the usual standards of the Hard Rock Cafe; as the clientele were mostly younger tourists and expats, shorts and t-shirts were the uniform of the day.

"Lara Croft." The man stood to greet her. Lara saw his nostrils flare in surprise a long moment before he decided to let the expression pass to his face. "Well, well, well," he said.

"I look taller in pictures?" Lara said.

"Heh." The man shook his head. "Oh, really. This is just perfect. The Tears of Horus, eh?"

"The trilithon at Senam Bu-Samida," Lara replied, probing back.

His expression changed. She had the sense she'd missed the expected reply. "Well," he shrugged. "I guess that makes another mystery about you, Lady Lara Croft."

Lara was a little annoyed at the dismissal. "A match for the mystery about you, Juan Carlos Halcon? Or should I be calling you 'El Halcon'?" She hadn't meant to reveal that so early, but she couldn't help it.

"'Carlos' will do just fine, my lady. Let us be friends." He saw her to her seat, and sat himself. "You and I are much alike; archaeology is our religion."

"Does _everyone_ in Cairo have to quote that movie?" Lara rolled her eyes.

"Oh, I'm that transparent, am I?"

"Carlos, you are a looter. I've heard of 'The Falcon,' all right. You've made quite a reputation over just a few years. Derring-do and narrow escapes, ransacked shrines, running gun battles, temples set on fire."

"You leave a similar record behind yourself, Lara Croft."

"I do it for the archaeology, Carlos! Not for the fame and fortune. What I find, goes into museums. I work to help humanity learn more about its past. I don't work to give rich men something to show off in their private collections."

"Oh, really? Can you look yourself in the mirror and claim you don't enjoy the thrill of the chase?" Carlos smiled broadly, but without rancor. Then he turned more serious. "You are a killer, Lara. We recognize that in each other."

"Only when there is no choice." But Lara couldn't meet his eyes.

This provided a perfect juncture for the waitress to come by. Fortunately for all concerned, the canned music had not moved to anything the staff might feel obligated to sing along to. The menu selection was wide, but their speciality was American-style fast food; Lara opted for a burger. With her metabolism and lifestyle, fatty foods were hardly a problem.

The best part — some would call it the saving grace — of the place was the view of the Nile. Fellucas sailed like agile swans below their tall triangular sails, steering about the sleek powerboats and the barges with washing strung on lines. The fountain in the middle of the Nile sprayed water into the air, not of course illuminated this early in the afternoon, and Cairo stretched out across the far shore, vanishing into the ever-present smog.

Civilizations had rose and fell along the fertile banks of this great river. 20,000 years ago people were trading down the length of it, marking the value of their goods on wooden tally sticks. Egypt was birthed in the cycle of flooding that brought life-giving water to the plains. The Romans fought for, and eventually retreated from, the upper Nile, followed by other empires — French and British among them. Chinese Gordon fought the Mahdi upstream from here, where the Blue Nile met the White Nile, and Kirshner came back through a few years later. Monty had pushed Rommel back just West of here, at El Alamein, giving Churchill the excuse to announce the war had at last reached "…the end of the beginning."

It was a heady history. Lara felt, at that moment, a rather odd longing for traditional fieldwork. For sitting in the dirt over long hot days, sharing both the drudgery and those tiny treasured moments of discovery with your team mates. Of course the field was changing rapidly, had been even when she was a student. GPS and software logging programs that had all but made traditional grids a thing of the past. And the new computer power meant that statistical and contextual analysis, synthesis and reconstruction and simulation, took a larger and larger role. But archaeology still moved today as it had for hundreds of years; on underpaid students sifting through piles of dirt.

She sighed, tried to bring herself back to the present. The music had moved on to a new selection, a rather lugubrious bit of prog rock. "No one knows who they were or what they were doing. But their legacy remains hewn into the living rock...Of Stonehenge. Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell…"

Tacked to the wall above Lara's head, amid the other music memorabilia, was a red electric guitar donated by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. A Squier Standard Strat, she noticed with amusement. She couldn't fault their economy.

"How is your food?" Carlos asked, being conciliatory.

"Authentic," Lara replied tersely. It sounded kinder than it was. And she damned Carlos for being able to get under her skin so easily. And for slipping so quickly into the role of someone she could have this sort of conversation with. He'd sent killers after her. He'd been involved in the bombing at Sotheby's. He was exactly the wrong kind of person to ever let one's guard down around!

"All right, Carlos," she said at last. "Why don't you tell me something I don't know?"

"Why should I?" he asked pleasantly.

"I'll tell you something you don't know."

"Try me. I'll let you know what it is worth."

Damn him, he was controlling the conversation again. Lara managed her temper with difficulty. "KV63," she said. "I found something there, a small black object, like a cobra folded into a zed."

"A _zat'nik'tel._" The name rolled off the man's tongue. "A useful toy. That wasn't my exchange, by the way. That was a freebie. So what else did you find in the second chamber?"

"A broken canopic jar. Nothing else obvious. I didn't have a lot of time to search."

"Ah. And who has these artifacts now?"

"I kept the snake. Everything else will have to remain until Dr. Schaden's team gets in there. I wouldn't expect them to move before next season at the earliest."

"Well." Carlos sat back, satisfied. "That was useful to me. So I will trade you with another name. Crystal Palace."

"Crystal…I assume you don't mean in Hyde Park."

"Don't think London, Lara. Think…Colorado."

* * *

Lara's bags were packed. It was time to clear Cairo. But she was a little reluctant to follow the lead Carlos had presented to her. What was in it for him?

The Tears of Horus. There was something about the falcon jars she was missing. Right, then.

"Alister, Zip, I'm widening the search," she said into her secure VOIP connection. "I'm linking you to the Sotheby's auction site. I want you, Zip, to do an image search. Gather any matches you can find to this artifact; current, old depictions in books, anything. Alister, I want you looking again for any reference to the Tears of Horus."

Lara closed her case with a snap, picked up the laptop bag. "There's something rather chilly about this artifact, gentlemen. I have good reason to believe the Tears are some sort of trap. A gift that harms the recipient."

"A Trojan Horse, eh?"

"Perhaps. Aside from not being Greek, or horse-shaped, or large enough to fit armed men inside. Aside from being not at all similar, that is."

"I…I'll get right on it."

"Me too, Lara. If it is on the web, it will be in my hands."

There was an unexpected interruption. A polite and very old-fashioned cough. "Pardon, my lady. That item Zip is looking at now; that is the Greek gift you are speaking of?"

"Winston? Yes, certainly. Why…have you seen something like it in father's collections?"

The aged servant moved into the camera pick-up. Lara was startled and dismayed by the expression on his face. Guilt. Guilt, fear, and overlying all of that, a terrible sorrow. "My lady," he said. He had to stop for a moment, recover himself. "I think it is best you return home. At once."

* * *

"General, we have a problem."

"Major, problems are what the Air Force pays me to have."

"Sir, the T Tauri anomaly. It's made it all the way to _Sky and Telescope._"

"Tauri? That's what the Goa'uld call us, isn't it. Major, why don't you come in, sit down, and start from the top."

Major Samantha Carter came in, sat down, and started from the top. "T Tauri is a class of variable stars, sir," she said. "Variable stars are incredibly important to astronomy. The mass/period relationship of the Cepheid variables allowed astronomers to construct the first cosmic distance ladder, and realize we were living in one galaxy among many. I'm sorry if this is too basic for you, sir."

"Go on," General Hammond said good-naturedly.

"Astronomers have been calling it the T Tauri anomaly after Sarah Chen at Keck first spotted the problem, but it is with other variable stars, particularly the SX Phoenicis variables, that it has become obvious to a growing group. Now that it has hit the popular science press, I'm not sure anyone can stop it."

"Major, the problem?"

"Sorry, sir. The better-behaved variables are driven by an internal resonance. They change in brightness in an extremely regular way. That's what made the Cepheids so useful as a standard candle. Sir, the nearest SX Phoenicis is well outside our solar system. We are jumping in time. That causes a visible break in the light curves coming from the star. It was only a matter of time before astronomers compared notes and realized they were seeing the same breaks in multiple cases."

"I see. I'd better make a few calls, then. How long do you think before this becomes public knowledge?"

"It already is," Carter had on her earnest face — the expression she got when she was following the science too closely to step back and look at the consequences. As the General watched, she caught herself at it, and shook her head in chagrin. "Right now, it is passing from being known as an academic curiosity among astronomers, to being a cool new thing known among geeks. The trouble with something like this, is, it doesn't take any sophisticated equipment to map the light curve of a variable star. Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the mass/period relationship in 1893, working from photographic plates."

"So it could spill over into the regular news outlets at any moment. Or remain a curiosity for a while longer," Hammond said. "Thank you, Major. If there is nothing else, I'd better get started on those calls. Before I have to start answering them instead."

* * *

Surrey: 51.15°N 0.25°W

* * *

His parents had never read Orwell: they considered him a dangerous radical. Winston Smith was in college before he discovered the character who shared his name, and he was rather bemused by the discovery. His parents were of the generation that returned to personal service as the highest possible calling. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, they took pains to pick up the aitch their forefathers had once dropped. Tugging the forelock was optional but recommended.

Winston had however grown with the times. He fully supported and had a healthy interest in his employer's profession. He wasn't a bad amateur archaeologist himself — as well as being a dab hand with the shotgun (a talent he'd proven on more than clay pigeons). Throughout all of this, however, he was still the consummate manservant, the Bunter to Lara's Lord Whimsey, a valet that Bertie would trade Jeeves for, a most admirable Crichton (though quite without the latter's ambitions).

Lara was also just as happy he preferred not to travel. It was a perfectly equitable arrangement for the both of them; he kept the household in order, kept the boys out of trouble, and otherwise managed her affairs while she was off adventuring across the world. And on her rare sojourns home, he doted on her and she let him.

But she'd never seen him like this. His hand shook as he brought out the Scharzhofberger Trockenbeerenauslese and the two glasses.

Every year she would come home as close to the winter solstice as was practical. And on that first night home she would drink the toast. Once, she shared it with her father. Now there was but a symbolic drop in his glass as she drunk alone. It was a family tradition. They'd started the year after mother's death. Even then, her father was increasingly distant. Not in emotion; he held her close with a sort of desperation on those rare times they had together. But he was so driven in his search, he could barely spare more than their yearly toast. That made it even more precious to her.

She had continued the toast after he vanished in Cambodia. She realized now she wasn't entirely sure why she had done so. Winston had merely shown up with the Scharzhofberger on that first anniversary, and she had let him guide. He must have seen she needed this symbolic link to her parents, this annual wake. And she did need it. She needed that time to unwind and reflect. It was the only time of the year when she could really stop and think about what sort of woman she was now. And whether her father would have approved of how his daughter had turned out.

"My lady." Winston's voice was steady. There had obviously been more than one sleepless night for him since he had asked her to return, and he had used the time to arrive at a place where he could tell her, almost dispassionately, of the crime he had colluded on with her father. "There is a step in the toast you never observed. It was a secret Richard kept. He meant it as a gift to you, when he realized you had begun the first steps along the same path as he."

He stopped. For a moment he seemed to break through the guilt he was carrying, and he almost smiled. "Your father could not have been more pleased that you followed in his footsteps," he said. "For all that he tried to protect you when you were younger, he respected the commitment he saw in you. If he were still here today he would be very, very proud. And that is why he wished you to have every advantage he had."

There was a hidden panel above the fireplace. Of course there was. Some ancestor of hers had been entirely too fond of secret passages and hidden panels. Where some family might have been satisfied with a priest's hole for emergencies, hers had added more hinges and traps than the Winchester Mystery House. She'd spent more than one rainy day searching the estate for such. Her father took a childish delight in the things himself, and added several of his own. It was bad enough one of them could mutter, "Put the candle back!" and reduce the other to tears of laughter.

Lara should not have been surprised by what Winston brought out of hiding. A small black container with a falcon motif. The broken upper half of the third Horus jar.

"According to the legends, the Horus Draught gave increased strength, endurance, and resistance to disease. Whether this was true or not, his yearly draught had not harmed him. He placed me into his confidence, and we…" his voice broke at this point, "…we began to give it to you."

"Winston, please," Lara went to him. "It did not harm him, and it has not harmed me. I'm not…I can't say I'm happy that father would do this without telling me…but I accept that both of you meant well."

She wanted to say more. She wanted to give him the forgiveness he needed. But this…this changed everything. She needed space to think. She couldn't trust herself to speak, and was forced to merely nod towards the door. Winston, as ever the perceptive servant, withdrew. And she hated herself a little more. This was far, far worse than that one time when she was a child and had locked him into the walk-in freezer. She had never forgiven herself that, and she might never forgive herself this moment, either.

The library was one of her favorite rooms; smaller and more intimate than most in the Abbingdon estate, with a muted parquet floor and walls entirely the color of the old books which filled every square inch that wasn't door, the Sienna marble fireplace, or the tall windows that let in natural light.

But at the moment, she found it stifling. The red Nigerian goatskin of the original 1782 chairs was usually comfortable, but not at this moment. She jumped back to her feet, strode across the room, flung open the French windows and leaned against the Parisian cast-iron rails of the small balcony.

The fresh air helped. The greenery of the West Garden helped more. Lady Gwendolen had done good work, when the big restoration of the grounds of Abbingdon had happened in Victorian times.

Lara knew her own modifications to the venerable building were sometimes looked at askance, especially by preservationists. Upon reflection, the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that walled off Zip's "batcave" of computers and electronics from the rest of the parlor was a mistake. She'd been misled by the way the similarly odd juxtaposition of I.M. Pei's glass pyramid had somehow not clashed in its setting of the _Cour Napoléon_ of the Louvre Palace.

Pyramids again. And she was avoiding thinking about the Tears of Horus.

She had been cheating. Through all of those daring escapades, through all those narrow escapes, something had been pulling for her. When she matched strength and skill against a fencer in a friendly match or a gunman in a deadly duel, she was being helped by a chemical boost. She was a steroid abuser, a doper. It didn't matter that she hadn't known. She had done it, she had taken the unfair advantage, and that meant all her accomplishments were less than they seemed.

She'd taken so much _pride_ in being faster, stronger, than anyone else around. Of doing gymnastics tricks others could not dare to. Of being the one that was still clear-headed and able to lend a hand with a heavy pack when the mountaineering expedition was well above the death zone.

She'd thought this was the product of her harsh training regime and the way she continually pushed herself to do more. She thought that these were all earned skills. Now she had to confront the idea that this might have been given to her.

She needed action. She needed movement. She spun on her heel and headed down towards the large and customized gym, practically shedding her travel clothes as she walked.

Out of all the facilities offered in the connected set of rooms, the aerial equipment was her favorite. But she couldn't trust her head at this moment. Better to work a little closer to the mats. Among the various upkeeps Winston managed was to bring a professional route-setter in for the climbing wall installed along the Eastern end of the largest of the rooms; the one with the atrium and skylight, with the trapeze and slack line high overhead.

Even Zip had tried his hand at it once (Alister refused to stir from his reading chair) and was surprisingly agile. Perhaps one day she'd get him out to the range as well and show him the right way to hold a pistol.

Lara picked a route at random. It started with an undercling, but after a couple of reachy moves offered a dyno off a pair of nubby crimps. Someone had been paying attention to her climbing style. The dyno was all the way to a shelf that seemed to call for a mantle; there were no feet available for this part of the route.

Her concentration wasn't in it. Usually, she could count on physical activity — particularly climbing, riding, or shooting — to put her in a focused zone where the rest of the world fell away. It wasn't happening today, though. She misread the route, tried to lean off a nasty little gaston, found herself on an off-foot and then blew the foot change.

She peeled from four meters up and there wasn't enough time to straighten up. She hit the mat at an awkward angle and rolled hard on her left trying to take up the impact. The world went grey for a moment. She stayed as she had fallen, waiting for the spinning to stop. She didn't seem to have damaged anything, at least.

Technique. She'd misread the route, and tried to bully her way through on strength. She looked back up. What she should have done, is stay on the off foot and flag with her right, and that would have kept the gaston at a positive angle.

She was already back on her feet and back on the route before the metaphorical shoe dropped. Skills. Training. Whether she had chemistry putting some extra muscle behind it, you couldn't solve a 7a bouldering problem without knowing how to drop-knee. And the same applied to fencing or shooting. Mere chemistry didn't teach you the _prise de fer,_ or to squeeze the trigger during the natural pause between breaths.

And no-one was born equal anyhow (with the possible exception of Monozygotic twins). One had the genetic lottery of one's own birth, plus the inheritance of one's line. And her line had always been marked by physical prowess.

Nor had it ever a problem to her to make use of technology in her work. She was entirely happy to bring a pair of match-grade magnums with custom-fitted grips to bring to bear against some poor Moro with but a traditional barong knife to his name. Her high-tech equipment, her wealth itself, was also a gift had been given.

So even if the Tears had given her an extra edge, she had still _done_ that training. She had still chosen to take those risks. Her physical accomplishments rested as much on trained skill as they did on natural talent, and that skill was earned. She didn't have to like it, and she was still extremely wary of whatever the hidden downside of that Greek gift was, but she could accept it and move on.

She topped out and down-climbed in an easier spot, this time landing lightly on the mat. Winston — his timing impeccable as usual — entered with a towel and ice water.

She took the glass with a thankful look and drained it. Then held his eyes with her own. "No more secrets," she said firmly. She needed to say no more than that.

Well, except for one thing. She smiled, suddenly. "I always wondered about the Scharzhofberger. So it wasn't just that father thought an excessively sweet riesling would suit a young girl's pallet. He was counting on that well-known petrol note to hide the taste of the Horus Draught."

Winston smiled properly then, his face relaxing. "As much as I admire the work of the elder Egon, I am afraid the '51 TBA was not one of his best. But your father had two cases of it in the cellars."

* * *

Upon reflection, the glass wall really didn't do anything for the room. Other than keep the rest of the house free from the incessant humming of computer fans and the frequent beeps of routers and whatever else Zip had in there. There was enough plugged in (and Zip had a _laissez-faire_ enough attitude towards proper power distribution) the annex also seemed to always smell of ozone.

It was also possible the partition wall was the only thing keeping Zip's Post-it notes from escaping. They crawled all over the main workstation, and, oddly, clustered in one corner of the room, forming a crude spiral on the floor that ended in a singe discarded tennis shoe.

The other thing Lara couldn't figure out is why Alister ended up there so often, considering he was much more at home with books and manuscripts.

"Alister," she said without preamble, "I've got something that seems down your line. Crystal Palace. What do you know about it?"

"Built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Architect was the head gardener for Chatsworth House, also designed Birkenhead Park. Was moved a couple times and eventually burned down."

"Not the one in Hyde Park," Lara said. "Think Colorado."

"Colorado?" Zip had been listening with bemusement. "Colora… Awe, hell no!"

"Zip?"

"You guys! Queen Victoria this and Tutankhamen that. You've got to meet the modern age. The Crystal Palace is what some people call The Mountain." The others looked blankly at him. "As in SAC. Oh, please tell me, you are _not_ going to try to sneak into NORAD next!"


	7. Chapter 7: Crystal Palace

I'm sorry, but I just couldn't face doing 6,000 words of Lara sneaking around in air vents, like playing Black Mesa in reverse. So instead this chapter features more wondrous strange and basically useless trivia from philanthropists of the Gilded Age to off-shore data havens to scientific insanity from the height of the Cold War.

I've been to Colorado. Once. Rode the cog railroad to the top of Pike's Peak. I was young and I remember little of the trip. So everything below is gleaned from research and is, again, probably wrong.

* * *

Cheyenne Mountain, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

"One does not simply walk into NORAD," Zip had said. Alister had nodded. For once, one of them had said something the other understood instantly. They might be from very different worlds…but both were also total nerds.

Lara wasn't exactly sneaking. She was hiking. The summit of Cheyenne Mountain fell within the Pike National Forest, but there was no regular trail to it from the recreation area to the South. Many visitors chose to cut through the various private lands that dotted the Northeast part of the massif instead, particularly if they wanted to reach the lower summit of "The Horns" (a striking though not particularly large rock formation).

She had started the day at the Broadmoor Hotel, a sprawling resort built by Spencer Penrose on Arizona gold and silver in 1918. Private aircraft were landing on the nearby fields in the late 20's, shuttling rich patients hoping the cool air of the Colorado Rockies would clear up their tuberculosis. Presidents and their entourages stayed at the hotel, major conferences rented the halls. It was five star, five diamond, and Zagat "Excellent," and many of the same high marks were earned by the hotel's own restaurant, and the professional-level golf course adjoining it.

And if golf, tennis, and swimming weren't enough for you, you could go across the lake to ice skate at a facility good enough to have hosted the World Figure Skating Championship. Or take a hike. The one maintained bit of Penrose's ambitious Cheyenne Mountain Highway started at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo; from there to the Will Rogers Shrine was an easy 600 meters as the hawk flew.

That same trail was a bit over three kilometers of innumerable looping switchbacks for a bird on foot, even if the raptor in question wore a bright turquoise top and salmon-colored nylon running shorts — an eye-catching neon salmon, at that — as protective camouflage.

In her small pack and otherwise about her kit was a GPS, and a 'zine from the growing sport of geocaching. That was her first cover if things went wrong. The geocachers reminded her quite a bit of the urban archeologists she had hung out with in the City by the Bay years ago. The same young, rebellious, colorful types, although with a lot more nerdy love of cutting-edge electronic gadgetry.

Her kit also contained a North American Arms "Black Widow" mini-revolver, and strapped to her left ankle beneath the hiking sock was a 24 cm Gil Hibben with a rubber-wrapped hilt. The back side of the mountain, especially parts of Old Stage Road, was described by locals as "Sketchy as hell" and was apparently the unofficial body dumping ground for the Colorado Springs area. Which, given the multiple antenna farms and probable NORAD sensors around, sounded like a very stupid idea. But then, crooks were rarely particularly clever.

The other thing she wasn't exactly doing was trying to get into NORAD itself. That task had better options than crawling around on top of the mountain. But as sprawling as the underground community was, her target was a little deeper yet — and offered a slightly more direct access.

"Most Americans," Zip had told the others, "think of NORAD maybe once a year, when they're tracking Santa's sleigh for the kiddies. Their real job, though, is watching everything that gets into North America airspace. It's a joint Canadian-American operation, and the headquarters since 1966 is the Cheyenne Mountain Nuclear Bunker; a hardened facility dug three hundred meters under a spur of the Rocky Mountains.

"The bunker was designed to survive a near-miss from a thirty-megaton warhead. It's got buildings on springs, it's got its own generators and a big underground reservoir, and 2,000 people could work down there — and survive for a month or two behind that meter-thick blast door - before they had to crawl out and fight for fresh food and water with the radioactive mutants outside.

"Things have changed since the Cold War petered out, though. They are moving most of the gear to Peterson AFB over the next few years, and are changing the name to 'Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station' or something.

"But that's not the point. There's something else going on under the massif. There's a lot of people coming in and out these days who aren't part of the NORAD command structure, and a lot of scientific and technical types who don't belong either. It's like there is a second facility within the bunker. And the list of specialists working there is wacked."

"'Wacked?'"

"They've got top-flight high-energy physicists, astrophysicists, paleo-botanists, xeno-biologists…"

"…And at least one archaeologist," Lara added.

"…Plus a crop of SEALs and Force-Recon Marines and other tough cases. I think I found that O'Neill of yours. He's so Black Ops if he tried to publish his memoirs, most of the pages would be blank."

"So how did you learn all this?" Alister was skeptical.

"Laundry," Zip said proudly. "The Air Force runs on civilian contractors, and their security isn't as hot as USAF's. I've been looking at food deliveries, uniform maintenance, construction equipment rentals, bus and taxi traffic; everything that moves in and out of the mountain. Computers, man. You can do anything with enough data and the right statistical analysis."

"It's called open-source intelligence," Alister said. "Spies have been doing it since Rahab."

"Yeah maybe, but I can do it a _lot_ faster."

"Well, I did a little looking around on the front door." It was Alister's turn. "NORAD doesn't have public tours, but they do junkets; congressmen and their families and friends. I'm afraid merely sharing a Queen with our friends in the Commonwealth is not going to get you in on your own merits — even if you had allowed yourself to be appointed to the House of Lords. However, among your many acquaintances, I am certain there are a few Americans with the necessary rank and political connections."

"The problem with going in with a tour, Alister, is that they already know you are there, and they know where to start looking if you wander off. I'm afraid I rank it slightly above swimming up the drains as a way to infiltrate a building."

"This from a lady who chose driving a Harley through the front window as the way to sneak into a skyscraper full of yakuza."

"I did no such thing," Lara replied. "It was a Ducati."

"So subterfuge is out. Direct access is tough. What's your plan?"

"I don't have one yet, Zip. But I do have a question. Assume the artefact from Giza is down there under the mountain. How did they get it there?"

* * *

"Am I addressing Sir Munson of the Principality of Sealand?"

"The…uh…who?"

"Munson," Lara said, "You are no fun." Not that Lady Lara Croft, Countess of Abbingdon, cared much for titles. Anymore than Munson cared for the quixotic dreams of the tiny, generally unrecognized, micro-nation of Sealand within which he made his current residence. His interest was in the secret histories, the CIA plots and Ministry cover-ups, what CERN was _really _looking for and the truth of what happened at the Pont de l'Alma underpass in 1999.

All he wanted in life was a cot, a hotplate, and a fast internet connection. Anyone else, Lara thought, would probably find his current home depressing and claustrophobic. Sealand was built on one of the Maunsell Forts from the Second World War. Two hollow towers, connected by a superstructure, were towed out over a sandbar seven nautical miles off the coast of Suffolk, flooded and sunk there to produce a crude gun platform suspended above the waves.

A pirate radio station was the first squatter after the structure was abandoned by the Royal Navy, followed by Major Paddy Roy Bates, who now styled himself "Prince Roy." The prince wished his artificial island with a population of maybe forty souls to become the world's smallest nation. Sealand had printed up their own passports, issued their own stamps, and of course gave themselves seigniorage, issuing the Sealand Dollar.

Unfortunately for their aspirations, the rest of the world had failed to play along. Since 1987, they now fell within the expanded territorial waters of the United Kingdom, and in any case the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea had unambiguously ruled that artificial islands don't count.

Not that even nationhood would have protected them if they had managed to seriously rile the U.K. The Falklands Crisis had aptly demonstrated that. Sealand essentially operated on British indulgence, like a crazy uncle kept around because he harmed no-one. It was, Lara thought, a peculiarly British indulgence — as was the stubborn ornery pride of the Sealanders themselves.

The U.K. was probably their main protector, at that. That, and the fact that no-one else seemed to want the artificial island — the one attempt at military take-over had been massed by one German businessman and some friends, and was foiled by Prince Michael a few days later. Lara wasn't sure how she felt about the realization that she herself could take over the place with no more than her customary pair of pistols, and style herself Queen of her own tiny nation.

In any case, an internet company had moved in a huge rack of servers to make up a profitable data haven, and that was an environment that suited Munson to a T. Or to an I.T., if you wanted to be clever about it.

"Munson," Lara said now. "You curious about what happened in Kazakhstan?"

"Soviets came in, Soviets went out. Eventually they even got their nukes back. It's a big country, Lara. More land area than Western Europe. 65th down on the list of world populations."

"Let me be more precise," Lara smiled. "At an installation not far from Kurchatov, along the Irtysh out of the Altai mountains. No, let me be even more precise. Project Carbonek."

"Semipalatinsk," Munson hadn't waited for her to finish. "The Polygon. Only the biggest test site for Soviet nukes….wait, what? Carbonek? You know about _Carbonek_?"

"I can put you in touch with Colonel Dosken Bahytovich Aslanov. He was there." Her smile widened. "So was I."

"Give, give!" From the sound of it, Munson was practically hopping up and down on his chair.

"No way. I tell you another word and you will be lost for days following up the connections. Me first."

"Right, then." Munson could barely contain his impatience.

"I asked you if you knew of anything large being brought into The Mountain."

"I can't tell you that, yet. But I can tell you something big was going to be. Cooler heads prevailed, but the shaft is still there."

"_Tanquam ex ungue leonem._"

"Eh? Anyhow, there's a shaft. A silo, actually, although it is unclear how much of the supporting hardware ever got installed. Was part of the original fit-up in the early 60's. So you've heard of Pluto?"

"The planet, or the Greek god?"

"No, the cartoon animal. Real funny. Project Pluto. Pluto was an insane little get-together between the Air Force and the AEC. They were trying to build a primitive cruise missile. A nuclear-powered one."

"Nuclear…?"

"Worse. A nuclear _ramjet_. A ramjet powered by an open-core, unshielded reactor. The thing would be completely robotic; no pilot could survive the radiation. You understand the basic principle? You bring a hollow cylinder of uranium fuel elements up to critical mass and shove enough air through it to keep it from melting. The superheated air blasts out the back and you have your rocket engine.

"They intended to fill the bomb bay with nukes, which it could drop on multiple targets along its flight path. Thing could stay aloft for months. But even before it got to releasing the bombs, here's what you have; a robot aircraft the size and weight of a locomotive, red-hot, screaming along just above the ground at over three times the speed of sound, irradiating the ground and spewing radioactive air and uranium particles after it. The shock wave alone would shatter buildings along the flight path, and what the passage would do to an unshielded human being doesn't bear thinking of."

"They put that into the silo in Colorado?" Lara asked.

"No. They never got further than an engine test. By the time they had the Tory-IIc reactor ready, the Air Force was getting cold feet. ICBMs were a lot more practical way to put warheads on target, and a lot faster, too. You would definitely see this thing coming! To paraphrase the general observing the ill-fated attempt to leap tank ditches with a Vickers Valentine by strapping JATO rockets to it, as a weapon of war it left much to be desired, but as a spectacle it would take much beating.

"Anyhow, the Air Force weren't the only ones with cold feet; by 1964 the shine had worn off the Friendly Atom; we had Windscale power excursion and the Bluegill Prime shot of Fishbowl that contaminated Johnston Atoll and of course the Daigo Fukuryū Maru."

"Thus leaving a hole."

"Not quite. Some bad ideas don't die easy. Someone got a hold of Pluto and managed to get a little money thrown into what they were calling Project Nergal. If they had asked me, I would have named it Project Esau, after the original red-headed step child. You know that a Teller-Ulam configuration can be produced to any arbitrary size, right? Just keep adding layers. Tsar Bomba was a fifty-megaton shot, and they NERFd it by using lead for the outer shell.

"It was sort of MAD — Mutual Assured Destruction — taken to the Strangelovian extreme. When a full-scale exchange had already begun, NORAD would launch this thing out of their own sole tube. It would then lumber over the bombed-over Earth as an un-stoppable juggernaut, finally laying a gigaton egg in the heart of whatever was left of Moscow. Well, fortunately, that plan died too. But not before they left a hole."

There was an "…and" there, and Lara picked up on it. "And?" she said for him.

"And I have a map," Munson said.

* * *

Lara had timed it carefully. The sun was just on the horizon as she crossed a low ridge and was able to see The Horns before her. The road (now a rutted dirt remnant) ended here, at what looked surprisingly like an ancient building. Whether it was foundation stones in a field in Surrey, or the remnants of 19th-dynasty workman's huts in the Valley of Kings, there was something common about the look of light against dark, outlining broken rectangles in what across the ages formed similar patterns of habitation.

This was the Honeymoon Lodge. Surrounded by the tall, slender shapes of lodgepole pine, in a clearing that now struggled to stay clear of scrub of juniper and sage, it had sat at 9,400 feet, at the end of a long winding access road, as a jewel of the Gilded Age. The exterior of the building had been in a Pueblo style, of all things, with roof poles sticking through what had seemed like adobe walls, and a tall foundation (and many stairs) in a truncated pyramid of hand-laid stones. No wonder the remaining foundations looked so archaic.

Unfortunately fewer customers had dared the six miles of winding road than Penrose had hoped. The restaurant lingered on until perhaps the 1960's, nearly disused and largely un-functional. The building might even have spent a short time as a brothel. Finally, fearing the costs of asbestos abatement, the ruin had been literally bulldozed off the summit; shoved without ceremony off the sharp drop-off to her East, into a rubble pile that still remained.

Evening clouds were moving in, well below her current elevation. On a properly cloudy day they could fill in to the horizon, making the summits of this and Pike's Peak into ships in a grey ocean. An oddly familiar sound drifted up from the valley; the distinctive four pitches of the Westminster Quarters, coming from the chimes at the chapel of the Will Rogers Shrine.

Lara found herself murmuring along, under her breath; "…That by thy help, no foot may slide."

It would make a good prayer for a rock climber as well, she thought. There were surprisingly few good climbs in the area, local guides had said. And they were mostly along the line of water above the Helen Hunt falls, originating up on the somewhat taller peak of Mt. Almagre. Lower down, they were said to be chossy but as one got higher the pink "Pikes Peak granite" was progressively revealed. That was tough stuff, formed in an igneous intrusion during the Precambrian; as close to basement rock as you were likely to get on the Earth's surface.

She had a harness, a lead line, and ascenders in her pack anyhow. But then, she wasn't intending to climb _up_ anything with them.

The quiet of the evening, and the natural setting, had somehow managed to dilute her awareness. The bicyclists were on her almost before she noticed them. Two, then another, then a last straggler. That was bad. That was just enough to give them that anonymity of numbers that allowed a group of individually sensible human beings to form themselves into a mob. These were mountain bikes, with the kind of mass-market look that spoke of enough money to provide leisure, but not enough to give them more productive hobbies.

They gave a few restrained whoops on seeing her. One kicked up his front wheel in a bit of a display, two others sped up with instinctive purpose to reconnoiter. The encounter was still resting on the broad plateau of normalization. If there was another hiker with her, there would be a quick bit of gruff hello, how's the view, and they'd be off. If she was alone, the ledge would narrow again.

_I do not have time for this,_ Lara thought. The circling bikes returned. The first riders were already off of theirs, coming towards her with easy, seemingly friendly smiles. So she reached into her waistband, pulled out the Black Widow, and tapped the laser sight on. She settled the dot on the bridge of the first young man's nose.

"The cylinder holds five rounds," she announced in a clear voice. "Is there another of your friends we could send for?"

"Hey, hey…there's no need for that," said the first young man. He didn't seem that frightened. Not being able to see the dot was probably part of it.

"I don't know that," Lara told him. "If there's no need, then we both walk away. If there was need, and this gun wasn't in my hands…"

He blinked. Apparently logic was not one of his strong subjects. He took another step, and Lara came within a fraction of an ounce of the full trigger pull. She had to fight her way back down from that. She realized with a shock that she had been quite ready to shoot him, and all his buddies. Pre-emptive defense was one thing, but this went well beyond.

Why? Was she that much in fear? Was it that she was so driven to find the Giza artifact, she wasn't willing to trifle with delays and interference? She was uncomfortably aware — had been, especially since the conversation with Carlos in that jumped-up burger joint on the bank of the Nile — of the trail of bodies she'd left behind her on her previous archaeological expeditions.

_Is this where it ends up, Lara?_ She asked herself. _Shooting a bunch of kids because it is less trouble than actually finding out if they are a threat?_

"Stop!" she warned. One of the other boys had been flanking her. Maybe he was just moving. Maybe he was hoping to grab the pistol from her. She switched her aim point to his center of mass and he stopped.

She sighed, loudly. "I know," she told her audience. "It's a pocket pistol. Not very intimidating. But don't be too misled by the size. This is a North American Arms Black Widow, chambered for .220 WMR; that's the most powerful cartridge made in that caliber. It will go fifteen inches deep into ballistic gelatin. It will have excellent penetration on you."

And…something changed. The ledge was getting wider again. Why? The threat parameters hadn't changed.

Then she got it. Tribalism. She had been speaking in a language they recognized. Bloody America. In love with guns, they were.

If that was it, then make a point of continuing. "Forty grain Winchester Super-x," she said. "Muzzle velocity over 1,100 fps. Expansion is only so-so, though." She grinned, then, and made sure to show her teeth. "That's why I aim for vital organs."

"That's…" one of them started, swallowed, then spoke again. "That's an aftermarket laser sight?"

Lara grinned again. "I know; the red dot just so, so, 1990's. The iron sights on this thing are shit for low light. Too close together. Next season they'll add a tritium. The LaserLyte pops right on; it replaces the factory cylinder pin. Keeps the gun slim enough it will still slide easily into a hide-out holster — or a pocket."

"You shoot often?" another of the young men asked. The tension was already easing.

"Not with this little darling," Lara replied in a friendlier way. "Reload is a pain in the backside. Have to remove the cylinder completely. But what do you expect of a back-up weapon?"

"I get you there," volunteered another of them. "My dad carries one of those mini autos for a backup. Looks like it was made in Taiwan. I tell him, dad, you need to use that thing, you'd be better off throwing it."

"So what's your usual carry?" It was the first one who had spoken, again. "Another revolver?" Yanks again. One gun for day wear. An even bigger one for serious use. And that wasn't even counting the collection at home.

Lara shook her head. "Automatics. A pair of Heckler &amp; Kock USP's in 9mm. Match version with the heavier barrel. The nice thing about the USP's is all the parts are ambidextrous, so I have mine mirrored. I had the slides mirrored too — well, stainless — but went back to the factory nitride finish after trying it once in the field."

"Honestly, 9mm? 45 ACP has superior stopping power…"

"Don't start again with that, Bob!"

"Yeah, come on. .454 Casull beats the hell out of them both. Wait…you have a _pair_ of 9's?"

"Yes, a pair. I'm an archaeologist, boys, and I tend to work in parts of the world that don't like _anybody_. My field kit is open carry. I always have the pistols. When I have to go somewhere particularly sketchy, like Bolivia, I'll add a hockler or the good old Remington 870. Haven't found a long arm I really like yet. They all have their little issues."

"This part of 'Springs can get a little sketchy, too," the talkative one admitted. He seemed a little smarter than the others. "So…why are you here?"

In for a farthing, in for a pound. "Why do you think?" she asked them. "I'm here to break into NORAD."

* * *

The oddest thing is that she had to convince them she meant no harm. That this was just another lark of urban spelunking, of breaking in just to be able to say you could. As outcast as the lads were, they were still patriots in a way that shouldn't really have surprised her (Since her own people showed so much of the same.)

With that out of the way — and her geocachers magazine circulating — she was able to get down to the business of crawling in. The top of the silo came out in yet another of the numerous cryptically labeled antenna farms that dotted the ridge lines, each surrounded by high wire fences and harsh lighting. Camouflaged of course by a layer of dirt and a twenty foot tower that, for all she knew, was translating the WFF's "Monday Night Raw" for Colorado Springs subscribers at this very moment.

But among the many things you needed to get a massive rocket out of a deep silo was some way of not creating a partial vacuum behind it. Even a remote silo didn't want to be sucking anything from the Project Nergal bird as it spooled up to full military power. So there were vents. Yes; as much as she had made fun of Zip and the others for suggesting it, she was going to be crawling through an air vent.

Or, rather, abbing down. The vent she wanted was at about 15 degrees off vertical, thus coming out near some of that convenient rubble. Lara had to wonder if the expedient demolitions of the Honeymoon Lodge hadn't been in part to cover up other work on the top of the mountain.

With her drafted helpers she had the vent uncovered, and her tools made quick work of opening it. "You may want to vanish," she suggested to the boys. "One way or another, I suspect the top of this mountain is going to be crawling with Air MP's before morning."

And then she was on line. Her custom lead was a scarily thin 2mm. Doubled for recovery, it had a comfortable margin for weight bearing, but the ascenders would shred the hell out of it on the way back. To get a decent grip on the thin line she was using a Petzl Piranha for descender. Like a lot of her gear choices, there was necessary compromise between precision and flexibility.

The angle was too shallow and the headroom too low for bounce-and-coast. And a Batman wall walk would mean she couldn't see where she was going. So the wove into the Piranha, after making sure she'd tied a knot a full meter from the bitter ends, brought the lines over her shoulder, and turned face down into the shaft for an Australian.

It was also, she realized a couple of meters down, also a way to leave a good parting impression on her erstwhile crew.

The LED on her pack straps pushed into the darkness of the narrow shaft. This was straight drilled, no frills, with only the top few meters lined with a steel shield. The rock below was wet from the innumerable springs that worked their slow way through the fracture planes of the massif. Water was ever the archaeologist's nemesis. Even in the harsh, dry landscape of the Theban Hills, water infiltrated into tombs, destroying artefacts of wood and any less-than-perfectly prepared mummy. She was going to be quite dirty by the time she finished this night.

Twenty meters. Thirty. The pattern on the rope passing through her descender changed and she slowed, coming up on the knotted ends with care. Forty. She'd expected this. NORAD was under as much as 600 meters of rock. These sloping tunnels could be only a fraction of that, or they could be even more.

She brought a bight up and took a half-hitch over the Piranha. Outdoors they were all about clean climbing. Inside, there was no point in leaving a rack's worth of perfectly good pro stuck into a cracked bit of rock no-one else would ever see. This was what cordless drills were for.

The hammer drill chattered and smoked working its way through the tough granite. She tapped in the expanding bolt with a rock hammer and clipped in. Once she was solid and confident enough in the new anchor she unweighted from the abseil line, unknotted it and pulled it through. Now she was committed. "Not like I ever return the same way I came in, anyhow," she said aloud as the end of the rope snaked down from the anchor far above her, her last point of contact with the clear mountain air.

She had to repeat the task twice more. That would make it about 130 meters; the last pitch was a short one. She braced her feet on the edges of the sturdy metal mesh that screened the end of the shaft and straightened up, her muscles glad to take a break from the abseil. She chucked the high speed cutting wheel into her cordless and started to work. In about twenty minutes, she had a shoulder-width chunk of steel she wrenched up and braced against the side of the shaft.

The remaining metal looked sturdy enough; she wove a length of accessory cord through the gaps and clipped one of her last carabiners to it. The hole she'd cut was so narrow, she felt like Buzz Aldrin wriggling his way out of the Lunar Lander with the huge brick of the PLSS on his back. Then she was swinging free, suspended in an open void.

This was no natural cavern. This was the shaft the 1967 doomsday machine was supposed to traverse as the world began to end. "Journey to the Earth's Core," she said to herself. The Jules Verne book had been a favorite of hers when she was very young.

Somewhere in the darkness above here would be the huge steel doors that sealed the shaft. Glimmering in the LED light were the shapes of the vertical rails that framed the shaft. Munson had guessed this. Most silos were little more than one missile deep, with the protection coming from the silo cap. This one added an insane depth into the rock — not that the overpressure of a precise hit wouldn't slam down the shaft like a tsunami wave. So there were no access platforms, no maintenance ladders at this level. Just sheer concrete-lined wall, and the steel framing.

She repeated the abseil, this time wrapping lengths of her dwindling supply of accessory cord around the solid framing members.

Bad news. There was a secondary door. _I guess they did plan for the blast overpressure of a near miss_, she thought. She studied the mass of steel. Even if she had the tools to open it, the noise that would make would alert the entire mountain.

On either side of the door gaped two huge mouths, though. A suppression system. That made sense; the flood of water that was piped below the Shuttle Stack was to prevent the concussion from rebounding off the pad and damaging the rocket. Nergal was to lift on a cluster of similar solid-fuel boosters, even if it was otherwise not quite in the same size class.

In any case, she'd take access where she could find it. A bit of tricky climbing and she was within one mouth. It angled up sharply, but she was just able to brace into it and chimney past the upright. Then she was in a long horizontal shaft — and she felt air on her face.

According to her innate sense of direction she had moved horizontally by almost another hundred meters before the pipe ended, cut off sharply and left incomplete, just as it broached the walls of a new chamber.

A chamber with light, and moving air, and distant sounds. After a few minutes of cautious observation, then, she leaned from the open mouth of the pipe, then made a short jump to a cross support that held a brace of similar pipes from the cavern roof.

And thus she was swinging by her hands, hanging over the heart of the American air and space command inside one of the most secure facilities in the world.

* * *

At intersection B-2, above the command center, a concrete dome thirty meters in diameter reinforced a shear zone in the overlying granite. Down the grid of tunnels, bolts spiked into the ceiling and wire mesh was draped between them to catch falling rock. Water dripped constantly, enough so pits were worn into the concrete floor beneath them.

The buildings were pre-fab and painted gray and the snaking pipes that ran everywhere were color-coded for air, fresh water, and so on. The Air Force might run the place, but it had been built by the Navy. It had the feeling of being below decks on a gargantuan aircraft carrier. Except for the frequent places where the raw rock of the heart of the massif was exposed, harsh and uncompromising.

Suspended from a pipe run that tracked right across the center of the dome, and over the boxy, near windowless three-story building that contained the command center itself, was Lara Croft.

She owed her life several times over, she figured, to the fact that people rarely looked up. She worked her way as quickly as she could across the pipe, and to a place where she could make an expedient abseil down. Immediately she ducked under one of the blocky buildings, crawling between the massive, meter-high springs that supported them.

Not what she had planned. If she'd meant to be inside NORAD proper, she could have skipped the rest of that climb. Well, this beat the tour idea in one way; no-one knew she was here. Not yet, anyhow.

The place was active. Out towards the entrance, vehicle engines whined as trucks and busses came and went. Technicians, guards, civilian contractors moved about. A squad-sized party in grey sweats jogged past, singing cadence in short choppy phrases between panting breaths, led by one soldier and picked up by the others in the age-old pattern of call-and-response. The hum and rattle of machinery was constant, and the smell of grilled cheese drifted from the commissary/cafe.

NORAD was actually drawing down, as Zip had said. Many of the buildings were now vacant, and the traffic was concentrated towards the Main Entrance. She mentally consulted the map she had gotten from Munson. Unfortunately, that would be the best place to look for an elevator down.

The close-spaced springs actually made it fairly easy to remain hidden. Although it was slow, uncomfortable work between them, and the congealed oil and dust was rapidly revising her wardrobe choice back towards basic black.

Numbers were stenciled on buildings, brown plastic name plates identified doors with the eternal style of every government office building, everywhere. On various corners and clusters of machinery were cryptic little name plates with boasting slogans from the builders or maintainers; "12111 OMCS ELEC 'Always in control'."

At last she was within her search area. There was a little cul-de-sac containing a desk and one of those little trailers that seemed to house on-site security at every construction project ever. That looked promising. Further east, a bored-looking airman in dark fatigues, automatic weapon slung, stood as guard near a niche where the dumpsters were stored.

Wait. They were guarding the dumpsters? Was the Air Force getting that serious about separating their recycling?

Lara edged carefully to where she could see further into the niche carved into the raw rock. The rear was screened. Or was a mesh-work door. A cargo elevator. Perfect! The problem with personnel elevators is people used them. That meant a layer of human security was necessary to identify and otherwise interact with all those people. Cargo elevators, on the other hand, relied on mechanical security.

Oh, and this one guard. _With any luck they'll think he collapsed from sheer boredom,_ Lara thought as she extended the artefact from KV63. Then she pressed the contact. It made that distinctive electronic sound and lightning briefly wreathed the lone guard.

Lara was in motion. She quickly pulled the guard out of sight, checked his condition and made him comfortable. Then it was time to employ one of Zip's gadgets, which worked better than they usually did and had the door to the cargo elevator open in moment. Calling the elevator itself was far too risky.

It was another long climb. Lara found herself wondering, again, about the claimed efficacy of the "Horus Draught." Twenty-eight stories (she counted the painted numbers on the shaft) was a lot for anyone to go without a place to rest their arms. She was beginning to suspect her own endurance was just slightly off the usual graphs.

The elevator itself was at the bottom of the shaft. Only in California were the handy roof access panels left unlocked by law. This one was typical, in that she practically had to dissemble the top of the elevator in order to get inside. But that's what tools were for.

She was close, very close. It was late enough there wasn't much foot traffic (at least not from the distant sounds of it that filtered down the narrow, metal-plated corridors). She angled along the broader cargo-way, supported — this far under the mountain — with broad hoops of metal like the hull of a submarine.

One more door, and she had it.

* * *

The Giza artefact was spectacular. The edges were notched in the geometric patterns of Old Kingdom artefacts, but the inner ring was decorated with symbols she had never seen the like of before. It was an entirely new language, and she itched to start learning it. The thing was in some dark, metallic substance and looked both unutterably ancient and uncompromisingly sturdy. She felt, instinctively, that it far, far predated any of the cultures that had grown up along the flood plains of the Nile.

That, however, was not the most remarkable thing. It sat at the bottom of the shaft, in a squared-off, two-story room top-lit by a harsh industrial lights. An expanded-steel walkway ran up to it from floor level. And it was supported, upright, by a frame of motors and coils and other pieces of technology.

They didn't just _have_ it down here. They were _doing_ something with it.

Then flood lights clicked on, momentarily blinding her. "Intruder alert!" A tenor voice with a slightly nervous tone declared over a piercingly loud PA. "Intruder in the gate room!"

With a whine steel panels were rolling up, uncovering a bank of windows on the second story of the facing wall. Squinting against them, Lara could see a room full of electronics, and a stocky man in Air Force blue holding a microphone. "Stand right where you are!" this man ordered.

The door had opened again. Airmen in helmets and flack jackets were piling in, quickly kneeling to cover her with individual weapons while others worked swiftly to set up crew-served weapons. Lara very carefully put the artefact from KV63 on the floor.

More movement. The lanky officer from Arlington strolled into the circle of firearms that was now pointing directly at her chest. "Took you long enough," he said laconically. "Your first mistake was using a zat," he said. He held up a brother to the cobra-shaped artefact.

Lara smiled and tilted her head, in a "You got me good," way, and raised her hands.

"Yeah, right," the Air Force officer said. He extended and fired the _zat'nik'tel_ in a single motion. Tingling pain wreathed her for a moment, then everything went black.


	8. Omake

SAMANTHA and ALEX enter at a run, panting for breath. "Hurry up, Samantha! Let's run!" says ALEX.

From off-stage comes a male voice; "Come back here, you little blighters!" The SOLARII enter en masse, a scruffy bunch of murderous scavengers:

"Derision and horror are what we command,

We are the SOLARII, and you're in our hands;

We worship a zombie, who makes it always rain —

We're made a total nuthouse, of Yamatai Land."

They rapidly surround the young people, making vaguely threatening gestures. The two put up a brave front;

"If you want to find the Scion,

Of course to put it in a museum,

Have rosy cheeks, no warts

(Not like you guys!)

Fire guns — all sorts!

You must climb well, you must move swiftly

Know eight languages and be fairly witty…"

A whooshing sound interrupts this silly song and the TOMB RAIDER swings in on a grappling line. She does a backflip in the air off the line and hauls out twin MP5K's.

"Who the hell are you?" asks one SOLARII.

The TOMB RAIDER answers:

"By the time the storm has blown

the _Endurance_ aground,

I'll show you if I can,

No matter what the circumstance

A Croft will out and Croft I am…

SAMANTHA and ALEX jump up and down and clap their hands and exclaim;

"She's practically perfect, in every way;

Practically perfect, we have to say —"

SAMANTHA sings "Now I'm not saying I want her body (unless you read the subtext)"

ALEX sings "I'd gladly give up my life for her…"

And both continue;

"She's practically perfect…."

"Oi! That will be enough of that!" ALISTER enters and pushes over the backdrop. "This is entoirly too silly!"

"Since when you you become cockney?" SAMANTHA asks.

"You think this is cockney? You probably think Excalibur was the sword in the stone, too!"

"Come on, Alister" a new voice is heard, coming from the speakers. It is ZIP. "Time to get back to the mansion and do what we do best."

"And what is that, Zip?"

"Oh, it's such jolly fun to be on headset,

Commenting along as Lara climbs.

When the action's slow we make jokes,

When she's stuck we give out hints, oh!

It's such jolly fun to be on headset,

A pity we only did it for one game!…"

Two colossal statues of Akehnatan come to life and start dancing around, accompanied by a bronze Buddha and a lion-bodied Sumerian lamassu. A penguin waddles out to join but is squashed in a moment.

Confusion breaks out as the SOLARII, angry at being left out of the action, start shooting at the statuary. They are quickly dispatched. The one who spoke was apparently a load-bearing mook, because the entire hillside collapses the moment he dies, throwing all the statuary into the ocean.

As the dust is settling SG1 enters, confused and cautious.

"I thought this story was about us," says CARTER (not to be confused with SAMATHA).

"Let's ask technical questions in seven languages," say DANIEL.

"The heck with that," says JACK. He suggests they should do what they do best;

"Let's throw dynamite,

(Pssst, Jack — it's C4!)

Blow up everything in sight,

Let's empty our magazines,

Gunfire solves everything;

Blow up the tomb that's here,

Then break to drink some beer,

Yes, lets…..throw dynamite!"

"Tomb?" the TOMB RAIDER echoes. "Why are you talking about tombs? What does any of this have to do with tombs?"

"HELL IF WE KNOW!" says the entire staff of Crystal Dynamics.

"We have another quest for you," says JANET FRASIER, joining the rest of SG1:

"Just a spoonful of Horus Draught will make you all strong,

Make you climb long,

Make you not drown.

Just a spoonful of Horus Draught makes you healthy and hale,

More like a Jaffa then I can say!"

"What the hell's a Jaffa?" asks the TOMB RAIDER.

"Just wait until we tell you about the Goa'uld. They're basically gods."

"I've met gods."

"No, _Egyptian_ gods."

"Met Egyptian gods, too."

"Too…?!"

NATLA enters in a vision, a la FRUMA SARAH:

"Brimstone and Eitre

Just make me shine brighter

Nukes do no more than just polish my wings;

Try as you might you will never destroy me…"

"I beg to differ," says the DOPPLEGANGER, successfully differing by killing her for good.

"Oh, great," says the WRITER. "What am I going to do for a villain now? Oh, wait…" He suddenly realizes he has Tech this weekend and ends the story in mid

For those that didn't get the joke; this is all referencing the Broadway Musical "Mary Poppins." Over the past few weeks I've heard each and every one of those songs 40 or 50 times. Couldn't write much while sitting in the dark waiting for my cues, but could think up new lyrics. Hence this.

The first few songs are roughly in show order; "Precision and Order," "Hurry Nanny," and "Practically Perfect," with the full introduction; ("By the time the wind has blown the weathervane around...") After that it gets random; "Jolly Holiday" (Which could also have been "It's such a jolly holiday with Lara..."), "Let's Go Fly a Kite," (my other alternate to that is "Let's Drink Diet Sprite." And then all the other lyrics are about beer), "Spoonful of Sugar," and lastly "Brimstone and Treacle," the signature song of the evil nanny Miss Andrew.

Nothing here is to be taken as canon in regards to the main story.


	9. Chapter 8: Under the Mountain

Sorry for the delay.

You'd think, after all the heavy research of the Cairo chapters, this would be one of the simple ones. Far from it. This one required a lot more thinking about character. And backstory.

It has taken seven chapters and thirty thousand words but finally the two casts are about to meet. I've noticed that outside of Golden Age superhero stories, first meetings in cross-overs tend to go quickly. It doesn't take long for them to realize they are on the same side, and to team up.

Well, I'm not going to make it quite so smooth…

* * *

Stargate Command, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

The first thing Lara noticed was a bright light shining into one of her eyes. That, and a tingling ache in what felt like every nerve in her body. She'd been shot before. On the whole, being shot with a _zat'nik'tel_ was neither the most painful experience she'd had…nor the least painful.

She was lying down, and a woman with an intelligent, triangular face with a narrow chin and large dark eyes was shining a penlight at her. A woman who wore Air Force blues under her white lab coat.

The woman moved the penlight to Lara's other eye. "I ask you," Lara winced at the light, "What could possibly be in my _eye_?"

The woman examining her said nothing, just a tightening of her lips giving her away, and Lara immediately regretted her wisecrack. If she was going to be held captive by a top-secret organization messing around in their elaborate underground base with ancient artifacts more dangerous than they could possibly imagine, she was going to need all the allies she could find.

"My name is Janet Frasier; I am the Chief Medical Officer of this facility." She finished her examination and restored the penlight to a pocket. "You've been shot with a zat. I am told you have some familiarity with them. It does not appear to have done any lasting damage to your nervous system. The remaining after-effects should fade within a few hours," she added, not without sympathy.

Lara accepted the dig with good grace. She _had_ shot one of their people first, after all.

"Airman!" Doctor Frasier raised her voice, stood, and was let out by a very serious-looking young man in fatigues who was quite smart enough to stand away from the door. Another guard held what looked like a P90, that futuristic-looking bullpup FN Herstal had developed for NATO, on the handy swivel sling that let him both hold it casually on the sling _and_ let the muzzle track far too close to Lara for her liking.

The door closed in a solid manner and left Lara alone to inventory her situation.

The room was small, with that bleak, unfinished look of a cell or a monk's quarters in some particularly austere monastery. She was lying on a narrow bunk, and appeared to have been dressed — from the scratchy feeling and the bulk - in some sort of one-size-fits-all coverall. She hoped she had Doctor Frasier and her medical staff to thank for that, too.

The filtered quality of the air and her own sense of underground spaces informed her she was almost certainly still deep under the mountain. Which put her in one of the more secure parts of a secure facility so hidden and secret half of NORAD didn't even know it was under them.

And what were they doing here? They seemed to be spending a lot of attention on that mysterious ring Langford had uncovered near the Giza Plateau in 1928. From the looks of the heavy electrical cables, they were running power to it. It reminded her quite unpleasantly of experiments she'd seen the end result of not too far from Semipalatinsk, in the shadow of the Altai mountains. A lot of scientists had died there, along with their military handlers. Lara herself had barely made it out alive.

Well. It wasn't the first time she'd found herself in enemy hands. She'd worked for an enemy, too — though always looking for an opening to escape with the artifact at hand. And there were potential allies here. That Colonel of theirs was a military hard-case. She'd met his like before. But Daniel Jackson was an archeologist. A fringe archeologist, too, but more than that, a dyed-in-the-wool ivory-tower wheat-germ-eating intellectual, as out of place in a hard-line military organization as a Corgi at a Pit Bull convention.

The giant, Teal'c, also might have hidden depths. Even from their short encounter, Lara caught the impression of one of those peculiar Honorable Warrior types military organizations attracted (but were not always capable of hanging on to). And of course, from the roster Zip had put together, there were more than a few boffins and scientist types down here as well. So not all military-minded shoot-to-kill types.

Yes, she could work with this material. She just had to keep in mind that, no matter how approachable some of these people appeared, these were _not_ the Good Guys.

* * *

General Hammond watched from the control room as the intruder was briefly illuminated by the electric haze of O'Neill's zat. Then she crumpled bonelessly on the expanded steel of the ramp, her long ponytail the last thing to hit the floor.

"Who is that woman?" Hammond barked. "And how the hell did she get into my facility?"

"That's Lara Croft!" an unexpected answer came from his right. Sergeant Harriman was looking down from the window with a wide-eyed expression. He turned to his superior. "Sir, that's what she _does_!"

* * *

"This day keeps getting better and better!" Hammond put down the phone, for what felt like the thirtieth time in the past hour. "That was the State Department," he told the people disported casually around the briefing room table. "Our uninvited guest is not just a recognized public figure, but a Peer."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. O'Neill looked over without changing his sprawl in a chair and explained, "Not pier, Teal'c, Peer. It means royalty. Like a Baron or Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl."

"Countess, in this case." Hammond watched the byplay with amusement. Teal'c was getting very good at the fish-out-of-water jokes, and O'Neill was just as facile in picking them up and throwing them back. "Also and coincidentally, a millionaire."

"So no rubber hoses, then. Only ermine or mink ones."

Hammond was momentarily distracted by the imagery. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything the phone rang again. "Yes," the others heard him say. "Yes, I understand." Then he took a deep breath. "The woman broke into _my_ facility. As long as I am Commander here, I _will_ find out how she did it, and I will do everything necessary to ensure the security of our operations here. _Is that clear?_"

There came a timid knock at the door. "Enter!" the general barked.

A lightly-built technical sergeant in short sleeves and wire-rim glasses, hair so close-cropped he appeared almost bald, was at the door with a small collection of books and magazines balanced in his arms. "Ah, Davies," Colonel O'Neill greeted him.

"Harriman, Sir," the newcomer corrected diffidently. "Here, sir," he gestured with his armful.

"Just put them on the table, Sergeant," Hammond said.

Harriman did. "I ran all the way, sir," he said. "It's really her, isn't it? She came here?"

"Thank you, Airman. That will be all," Hammond said.

"Thank you, Norman," O'Neill said over his shoulder.

From behind the closing door came a muffled, "Walter, sir!"

"Our guest," General Hammond pointed at the literature, "Seems to have made a bit of a name for herself."

"And wears it well," O'Neill was already studying one glossy cover with appreciation.

Teal'c had also reached out to help himself. "She appears to be a warrior of no small account," he surmised after a few pages. "It is customary in your world for mercenaries to be armed with modern weapons, is it not? According to this account she faced down a full platoon of them in some place called Peru."

General Hammond looked again at his watch. "I don't know what is holding up Doctor Jackson. We need to start. Gentlemen, you have met our mystery visitor in person. I would like your impressions."

"She's a loose cannon," Jack O'Neill said immediately. "A thrill-seeker. I think she took us on in the cab just because it looked like fun. Good thing she wasn't armed, or we might have had a shootout right there on the street."

He nodded in the direction of the magazines and books Harriman had brought in. "And she's a killer, sir. Big game, local military, rivals — anything that gets in her way. I think the world would be a little safer if you never let her out."

"Thank you, Colonel." O'Neill had made his point succinctly. But Hammond couldn't help feeling some of that rancor was a sort of professional affront. O'Neill had a similarly colorful past, but in his mind the distinction was that he had always acted under orders. Hammond was a career military man, with all that implied, but he was also too much of a historian to let the mere fact that a government had ordered it make black operations somehow less morally ambiguous.

Teal'c was also frowning slightly. "From what I read here, those she faced in combat were hired killers or dangerous animals. Should not she be praised for killing them?"

This time Jack did turn in his chair. "The point, Teal'c, is that she broke in _here_. She knows about the Stargate now. And that makes her dangerous."

The door opened without announcement. "Sorry I'm late," Daniel Jackson said with that confused blink of his that made him look like his glasses desperately needed cleaning. He took some hurriedly-folded papers out from under his arm and dropped them in an empty chair. "I was exploring a new angle I'd thought of for Doctor Frasier's research project and I lost track of time. Do you know that silphium was considered the wonder drug of the ancient world, but no identified modern specimens exist? I had to go all the way back to studies Paracelsus had made to…"

"Thank you, Doctor!" Hammond said quickly. "Please have a seat."

"We've been reading up on your archaeologist friend," Jack O'Neill told him. "Do you know she almost recovered the Ark of the Covenant?"

"She's hardly an archaeologist!" Daniel shot back. "She's more like a, like a tomb robber!"

"They call her The Tomb Raider," Jack said, being helpful.

"Raider, robber, same difference. She doesn't follow the proper methods. She destroys priceless sites, and removes key artifacts from their matrices."

"Artifacts?" Jack said innocently. "Like crystal skulls? Or stargates?"

"That's entirely different!" Daniel was having trouble getting the words out. "We have to take and store the things we find because they are so dangerous. They can't just be left around in a museum where anyone could accidentally activate them."

"Hrm." Jack made a pretense of looking something up in what appeared to be a fan magazine. "It's saying something pretty similar here about a thing they call the Spear of Destiny."

"G'ah!" Daniel could only say. "Longinus. That's Ahnenerbe nonsense. Indiana Jones stuff. He's not a real archaeologist either. What kind of archaeologist goes around with a whip and a pistol?"

"You're right, Daniel," O'Neill said, turning serious. "We need to get you a whip." His eyes brightened. "We should get one for that archaeologist we have locked up downstairs, too. Yrrowl!"

"She's not an archaeologist," Daniel protested weakly, on losing ground. "She's…"

The phone rang again. Hammond picked it up, said "Thank you, Airman," hung up and turned back to the others. "She's awake."

* * *

"Lady Croft?" They knocked before coming into the cell. Her status had changed, apparently. "We are to escort you to General Hammond's office." Well, not changed enough for them to let her freshen up in privacy. Not that she had any supplies on her, note. The "natural" look didn't come naturally, after all. It came with several milligrams of powders and creams — preferably from the best Parisian suppliers.

"I'm ready," she said instead, ran a few fingers through her hair, and tugged the ill-fitting coverall into what little order it could achieve.

The bronze giant, Teal'c, was waiting politely outside, showing off his massive arms in a tight black t-shirt tucked into camouflage trousers. He was hatless, and Lara's eyes could not help be drawn to the symbol embossed on his forehead. Not a tattoo; it looked like ritual scarification. A snake. That distinct upwards hump…it looked like a simplified version of Egyptian depictions of the serpent-god Apep, nightly devourer of the Sun. Attributes that were later subsumed into Set. Not altogether a positive sign!

Teal'c held up one massive hand — in a pose not unlike a cigar-store Indian — as Lara's armed guards started to fall in behind her.

"Will you offer me your parole?" The giant enquired of her. There was just the slightest twitch of his expression that made her think he'd recently learned the phrase and had been waiting for a chance to use it.

"Would it be a problem if I didn't?"

"No," the giant replied, his eyes twinkling. They understood each other perfectly at that moment. He would be just as happy to treat her as an honored guest, but if she wanted a rematch, he was game for that as well. And extremely confident that this time he would win.

Lara felt the tension in her rise, and knew she was sending the same tight smile back to him. Challenge noted…but tabled for now. There was just the slightest nod passing between them, and it was decided.

"Leave us," Teal'c told the armed airmen. "This way," he offered Lara.

This wasn't the time. Not yet. For now, she needed to see what they had to offer her.

* * *

The woman was striking, Hammond had to give her that. She walked into the briefing room with the poise of a wealthy patron entering a private art gallery…with just a little bit of a model's sway that the coveralls sadly did little to accentuate. She looked taller than she was, slimly muscular, evenly tanned to almost a dusky amber — an exotic effect emphasized by her high cheekbones and the slight tilt of her brown almond-shaped eyes.

She saw the books and magazines Harriman had provided, and winced slightly. A studied reaction, Hammond was sure. "I see my reputation has proceeded me," she said in a wry tone.

"Lady Croft," Hammond was preemptory, "I have just been the recipient," he waved a hand behind him, towards where the telephone sat mercifully silent, "of twenty-three different phone calls from almost as many agencies domestic and foreign regarding your welfare and disposition."

He was angry, and he didn't care who knew it. "I want this made perfectly clear. I will find out how you broke into my facility, why you broke into my facility, and you will be released when I am satisfied with your answers."

"I'd be happy to give you all the details," Lara replied. "No charge," she added impishly.

"What?" she said when they reacted. "Do you know what the services of a professional Tiger Team would cost you? Actually, I could tell you with a look at my business records. I tested the security systems of several high-profile companies, and for quite a hefty fee. Can't tell you who owned the data center I proved wasn't as secure as they thought it was — non-disclosure agreement — but their name starts with a 'G', ends with an 'E,' and represents a number even higher than what they paid me."

O'Neill snorted at this. Hammond spared him a glance and saw he was starting to grin. She put on a good show. But behind Hammond's plain-spoken, West Texas-accented facade was some very good people sense. The woman was not in her comfort zone, and she was putting out a strong effort not to reveal that.

* * *

Lara was not happy. She knew what to do when they blustered and threatened. She'd had everything from two-bit mercenaries to the heads of Fortune 500 companies try that with her. But these were very smart, very level-headed people. When that General said he'd cheerfully keep her locked up for years, he was making a straight-out statement of fact.

Which made it even more imperative she be useful to them.

They were in a low-ceilinged briefing room, comfortable, well-lit, with a long octagon-shaped table in polished red and black wood. A series of windows along the wall to her right were covered with roll-up steel shutters.

That was informative. Her finely tuned spacial sense told her those closed windows overlooked the bottom of the missile shaft; the room where the Giza artifact was being stored. That sent a bit of a confusing signal. It meant they didn't want to talk about the Giza find. At least, not immediately. And it implied they realized that much about it was still a mystery to her.

General Hammond was a stocky, fit-looking, entirely bald older man in short-sleeved Air Force uniform and a no-nonsense manner that hadn't the slightest hint of bluff about it. The only others in the room were those she had encountered briefly but memorably in an Arlington suburb; the military hard case (happily bird-watching at the moment), the academic (looking flustered), and the giant, who was seated slightly back, watching the others with interest as if he'd recently arrived from somewhere remote and was still learning how the locals went about things.

Which meant Hammond was the important one to sway in this interview. At the moment, at least, he was looking slightly mollified. "You will be debriefed by our people," he told her. "Extensively." He took a moment to frown at her. "And I have a few questions of my own."

"I protect my sources," Lara said. "Hold on," she added quickly. "In this case, he isn't a source. He's a professional rival. I think he told me to look into Cheyenne Mountain just to see how deep a hole I could dig for myself."

"Name." Hammond wasn't making it an optional question.

"You know him already," Lara said tightly. "Juan Carlos Halcon. The Falcon."

The military hard case spoke up then. "He give you that zat, too?"

General Hammond stopped her before she could speak. "Lara Croft, this is Colonel Jack O'Neill, USAF, Doctor Daniel Jackson, and…Teal'c."

"Pleasure." Lara didn't pause, but went on with her answer. "That odd little Egyptian-looking weapon came from The Pharaoh."

"_The_ Pharaoh? 'Let my people go?'"

Lara was startled into a laugh at this. "No, not that one. Doctor Hawass. Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. He asked for my help in preliminary exploration of a new find in the Valley of Kings."

"KV63." Daniel Jackson spoke for the first time. "They let _you_ into KV63. There are post-grads at Chicago who would give up their life savings for an opportunity like that!"

"They should speak to Zahi," Lara said with a thin smile. "His reality televisions show may be hiring."

"Actors," Jackson replied with a snarl. "I've heard about that show. They use actors. Also not real archaeologists."

Oh, did he just say that? Lara's smile got wider. The game was _so_ on.

"People!" General Hammond had not missed the tenor of the exchange. "Back to the subject?"

Lara spread her hands. "Second chamber in KV63," she said tersely. "Mostly bare, a few broken bits of funerary goods. The _zat'nik'tel_ was in a hidden drawer. And that's all I know about it."

"Thank you," General Hammond said. "You've been most helpful."

She had, hadn't she. Which left her far too few bargaining chips. She really did not want to disappear into their lockup until they had either given up work on the Giza artifact — or worse yet, managed to activate it.

"Doctor Jackson, what questions do you have for our guest?"

"Well, for starters…" Daniel began, in an angry tone of voice, when the shrill of a telephone cut him off.

Hammond picked it up with a sigh. The military bearing had never left his posture, but as he listened he straightened even more, until he was practically at attention. "I will hold," he said. He did so. It took a full minute for the next voice to come on, and as it spoke the others watched his eyebrows go up, and the faintest touch of a smile reach his features. "We will take that under the strongest advisement," he said then. "Thank you, Prime Minister." He put down the phone as if wondering what other surprises it might produce that day.

"Was that…?"

"It was." Hammond shook his head in disbelief. "The Right Honorable Tony Blair himself. He says you are a pain in the ass, but you are _their_ pain in the ass. I take him to mean the British Government places the highest trust in you."

"Pain in the backside, sir."

"Eh?"

"That's what he would have said." Lara grinned. "That's what his teachers at Fettes College called _him._"

"He also wanted to remind you that signing the Act isn't necessary for you to be prosecuted under it. Now, if there is nothing further…?"

Hammond gestured to Teal'c, who stood up smoothly and walked to the door. So they were dismissing her. Which meant she might be losing her best chance to find out what they knew.

Unless…her eye was caught by the top sheet of several loose papers sitting forgotten in a chair beside Daniel Jackson. This time the smile only reached her eyes.

"Silphium, eh?" she said aloud.

"Err, yes?" Doctor Jackson looked at her, then down at the chair. "It's a research project for our Doctor Frasier." He shuffled the papers nervously.

"And the Voynich Manuscript? Really?" Her voice was more sympathetic than chiding.

"I just wanted something to show off the style of illustrations in the old herbals," Daniel apologized. "I know it's believed now to be a 19th-century fabrication."

"I know what you are after, and I can help you find it."

"You do?" There was hope in Daniel Jackson's voice, and as he met her gaze, she saw the same excitement of the chase that was in her eyes.

"We need to look where that came from," she pointed at the photocopy. "In the Special Collection at Prague Castle. And I can get you in."


	10. Chapter 9: Many Meetings

Okay, so it's another bottle episode. I thought about putting all the background into the trip to central Europe, but there's a reason the television series reached for the old briefing room over and over. It's because it keeps things simple. One info-dump at a time.

And there's a lot of info to dump if you aren't careful. That's another problem with cross-overs; each of the continuities is complete and complex, capable of supporting hundreds of stories on its own. You pretty much have to trim them otherwise you end up with a kudzu plot.

Which is the main reason why Lara has seen the Stargate now, but no-one has yet seen fit to explain what the damn thing _does_.

Incidentally, _Mitnacht Schreknis Heel_ is real. But the details have been, err…_inflated_ a bit. Oh, yeah; a little content warning — racial epithets and a some violence in this one.

* * *

Flagship Belisknar, Deep Space, Coordinates Unrevealed

* * *

Thor was pondering.

He supposed he should be doing it on a rain-swept outcrop of rock, water streaming from his iron helmet, the winds lifting lifting the edges of a great tattered cloak. He knew the stereotypical imagery well enough, having approved many of the hologram projections himself.

He had enough self-awareness to realize the pose wouldn't look quite the same on a four-foot tall, skinny, chinless grey alien.

Humans were endlessly inventive. If the Goa'uld would be honest with themselves, that would have to be one of the things that made them chose humans as their preferred host. Inventive — and energetic. But there was something different about the Tauri: the original strain, never taken from their world in captivity to the Goa'uld.

They were…ah, what was that human term for it? Ornery. Yes, ornery. Tough bastards, in their idiom. They were young and cocky and had very little idea of how much there was still to learn, but already they had several of the high-and-mighty System Lords chasing their own tails.

Thor blinked. Several times. That was a vivid language his Tauri friends spoke. If one wasn't careful, one found their idioms taking over. Better to think in his native language. It was mathematically oriented, precise in meaning, vast and cool and unsympathetic…and he was doing it again, wasn't he?

Thor carefully took his hands off the console, and closed his eyes entirely. He was tired. He needed rest.

The entire species needed a rest. They had gone too far, preserved themselves too long. The spirit was almost gone in them.

Brísingamen might change that. The project had taken even longer than anyone had planned. The accident, during a critical part of the first phase, had been partially responsible for those delays.

Freyja and the others had secluded themselves to finish the work. Even now all they would hint was that it was going well and the end was near — within the decade, even.

Thor sighed. It was a Human trait as well as an Asgard one, but they had added the nuance of a vocalization to it; an affectation he had adopted as well. He wasn't as hopeful as some that Brísingamen would actually succeed. He felt in his bones — his increasingly _old_ bones — that within the foreseeable future the Asgard would move on. And he had to hope, then, that the race he increasingly thought of as his children might make suitable heirs.

* * *

SGC, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

The place had the same look of every mess hall across the civilized world. The same easy-clean stainless steel fixtures and formica-topped tables and steel-tube chairs and the same miasma of fats and syrup and burnt toast hanging in the air. They could have been in any air base across the world, or for that matter, in many a school or hospital. Or, as it happened, on Level 22 of a secret facility buried deep under Cheyenne Mountain.

Also like any mess hall across the world, a lot of business got discussed here instead of inside offices or briefing rooms. The Colonel looked unsurprised to find Lara and Daniel there, still deep in discussion. He set his tray down, then slid into a chair. "Miss Croft. Daniel," he said. "So. What's this I hear about you wanting to mount an expedition to Antarctica?"

"Antarcti…" Daniel started before trailing off in complete confusion.

"I ran into Siler. He said you were talking about the poles."

Lara smiled. She was starting to grasp the man's odd sense of humor. "Colonel, we might have mentioned the Poles, but we were more concerned with the Czechs."

"Yeah, financing a trip to the South Pole is going to take a pretty big check."

"Prague." Daniel cut through. He was having none of this. "I need to go to Prague."

"Maybe you'd better explain." The Colonel's voice hadn't changed, but the others could tell that this time he was being serious.

Lara and Daniel had been hitting the books hard for the last six hours or so. Of course, first she had to meet — at length — with the facility's Head of Security, a beefy, taciturn man with his left arm in a cast. Sergeant Siler had perked up considerably when he learned that before she broached his security, she had successfully put one over on the nuclear bunker above. Lara could tell he was almost looking forward to the reports he was going to be making.

Daniel had showed up at the conclusion of that debrief and practically dragged her to the base's archaeological and linguistics library, which like almost all of the rooms in this rambling underground facility was utilitarian to the extreme, looking more like a storage closet than a library. On the metal shelves was a small and extremely eclectic set of references, and Lara had the strong feeling at least half of them had come out of Daniel's personal collection.

She was starting to get a sense of the young archaeologist as well. He was, like Alister, biased towards the academic side of things, but there was a rangy outdoors quality to him that suggested he was no stranger to the trowel when necessary. He also had, like Alister, a touching faith in the text. Which, for Daniel, appeared to include an open-mindedness about folkloric and and even pseudo-archaeological sources that could almost be called credulity.

But as they tracked the possible connection between the Tears of Horus and certain long-lost medicinal plants the herbalists of later centuries struggled mostly in vain to re-discover, she also noted that Daniel Jackson had a nearly uncanny talent to fish out the right answer from what by all rights was inadequate and contradictory information.

"Silphium," Daniel started to explain, now. "That's the key. It was traded all over the Mediterranean, and found across the ancient world." Seeing Jack's expression, he fumbled for a way to make things clearer. "Here," he said. "Let's let this salt shaker represent the silphium."

He opened a paper napkin, then put the condiment down on top of it. "The middle of the table is the Mediterranean basin," he said. "Your tray is in Africa. That napkin is Cyrenaica and Tripolitania."

"More-or-less present day Libya," Lara added helpfully. "Good choice with the salt, Doctor Jackson. It was also an important trade good of the ancient world," she explained to the Colonel. "More than a few wars were started over salt. You find it mentioned in Herodotus, included in funeral offerings, and even used as a currency."

"Silphium was so important to the city of Cyrene they marked their coins with it," Daniel continued his explanation. "Cyrenacia was a Greek colony, originally, and a center of Greek culture and learning. Erathosthenes came from there. You know? The man who first calculated the circumference of the globe?"

"As is true of so many places along that coast," Lara said, "The Persians took over, then the Romans. And it may have been the Roman's fault that there is no more silphium in the world. You see…" she carefully un-wedged Daniel's bit of napkin and tore a thin strip from it, "_this_ is the only place in the world where the stuff grew. A narrow bit of coast only fifty kilometers wide and not that much longer. They over-harvested. Possibly over-grazed the land, too."

"So silphium appears in Roman cookbooks as a spice up to, well, up to the present day," Daniel said. The Colonel was beginning to look like a man at a tennis match. "But it isn't the same plant. It's a substitute. Or so we think. Because we still can't identify the plant reliably. The best guess is that it was some sort of giant fennel. A lot of useful medicinal plants may have gotten lost in the same way. Medicine, and botany, weren't as systematic then."

"Worse, they were kept secret. Healers and guilds and others didn't want to share their methods with everyone. Even the herbals were kept under lock and key, passed only reluctantly from one old master to his apprentice and heir."

"This is what one of the old herbals looked like," Daniel shuffled through his papers to find a facsimile of an old manuscript, spidery drawings filled in almost childishly with splashes of color.

"Enough!" The Colonel had finally recovered enough to hold up one hand. He looked around in obvious search for an escape route, and his eyes fastened on the bronze-colored giant, Teal'c, who genially strolled in their direction with a huge tray filled with sweets balanced in his hands.

Daniel, however, had yet to notice his audience was bailing. "This is actually the Voynich Manuscript," he apologized. "Seemingly drawn around the time of the later herbals, but was probably a fake made to palm off on a collector. The drawings in all the herbals were drawn to be understood by people already privy to the secrets of the herbalists, and are hard for outsiders to read, but the plants in the first third of the Voynich are pretty obviously made-up specimens that never occurred in nature…"

"That is Ch'mek," the giant said firmly, pointing at one image. "It grows in the highlands on Chulak. In your language, 'numbweed.' It dulls the pain of fresh injuries in animals and men."

"Pull up a chair, T'ealc," the Colonel said. "There's plenty of space there, between Italy and Spain."

"I see," the big man said, in a tone of voice which indicated he did not.

"My plate is in Italy, Daniel is near Greece, and the Colonel's tray is representing North Africa. His jello would be right about at Khartoum," Lara explained. For a brief moment, she mused how well O'Neill would probably have gotten along with General "Chinese" Gordon. Then she reached for the pepper shaker, and placed it on the napkin not far from the salt. "There was a hidden chamber dedicated to Horus _here_, not far from Tripoli," she said. "The Horus jar that Catherine Langford had showed up around Malta — that's almost due North of Tripoli, about a third of the way towards Rome."

She speared a crouton in "Rome," but could not quite bring herself to mention that she was eating a Caesar salad. Wrong Caesar anyhow.

"You've lost me," the Colonel admitted. "You lost me a while ago."

"I'm sorry," Lara said.

"But I do love listening to the way you talk," he added. Doing his best to put on a Southern drawl, too.

"Point is, Jack, Lara's found the connection we've been searching for. The jars contain a liquid some writers have named the 'Horus Draught.' It was used by admirals, warlords and dictators; it may have some of the same properties as that miasma of Hathor's. So anything we can find of that liquid or the plants used to prepare it might help Doctor Frasier to develop a general-purpose antidote."

"We don't have the plants themselves," Lara admitted. "We went down s number of cold trails. Even Tycho Brahe tried his hand at raising some of the old medicinal plants in the gardens of Uraniborg. But there was one collection that had a better chance than most of having actual samples. Or at least better information. And that was held by a man who could be considered one of the first systematic scientists, for all that he was a dilettante, a collector, and a friend of occultists and charlatans."

"Rudolph II. And what remains of his collection is in Prague. Jack, he had one of the Horus jars. I think it's the best place to look."

"All right." The Colonel spread his hands. "You've convinced me. I didn't understand any of that, but you've convinced me. I'll talk to Hammond. Start packing; we leave Monday."

"We?"

"Do you seriously think I'm going to let _two_ scientists go out in the wilds alone? Without someone to keep them out of trouble? I'm sorry, Teal'c," he said over his shoulder. "The State Department is still antsy enough about letting you off post. They aren't going to like us sending you to Europe. Especially so near the former Soviet Union."

The giant had not answered. He was looking at the improvised map. "Teal'c?" Daniel asked.

Teal'c pointed. "Daniel Jackson, what is that?"

"That?" Daniel looked. "Oh, that," he said. "That's my coffee." He picked it up off the table and drank.

* * *

Cayo District, Western Belize, 16°50′N 88°55′W

* * *

The night air was hot and humid. That was the main difference between the seasons, as far as Kent was concerned; whether it rained often or too much. He was already looking forward to the "little dry" that usually hit in July. The canopy was closed in tight above, letting little of the night sky show and even less fresh night air in.

The white black man finished checking his gear. Kent was no stranger to archaeologists, adventurers, and tourists — which as far as he was concerned were all just variations on a theme — but this guy took the cake. He was dressed like he came off a movie set; safari shirt, khaki trousers with knife-edge seams, crocodile skin boots: all of it spotlessly clean. His face might look mestizo but he had money and he was foreign. That made him "white man," as far as a Belizean was concerned.

The hole in the ground was uninviting. "_Mitnacht Schreknis Heel," _was the name the Mennonite farmer had given it. Midnight Terror Cave. Kent suspected that Whistler, the real discoverer, would agree. The stupid bastard had fallen in and had to be rescued by a local farmer, and now everyone knew about a new Mayan tomb. Broke three teeth in the fall, too. Which is why he had a new name now.

"As above, so below," someone had said. The old Mayans had taken that to extremes. For every pyramid they put up, they found or made themselves an equally deep cave. And what had given this one the name was that in the first big cavern you came to, sitting in a foot of nasty brown mud, were the skeletons of hundreds upon hundreds of…children.

Kent didn't like anyone a whole lot, but the idea of all those children sacrificed underground in the dark and the mud bothered him. Apparently they weren't even local; the Mayans had brought them hundreds of miles to be killed. Kent wondered if they had known why they were being brought. And how they felt about it. Life could get pretty messed up in the jungle; maybe they even welcomed it.

The Bold Explorer was ready to descend now. Carlos, that was his name. Juan Carlos Halcon. He was apparently a big shot in some circles. One of the expats in town, a perpetually drunk retiree who thought he was a writer, had spent a while listening to the man and writing everything down.

"I'll wait for you up here," Kent said, doing his best to play the pukka sahib role.

"I expect you will," the man said archly.

Kent had a bit of a double take at that. It was almost as if the man knew that Whistler was already hiding in the underbrush not far away, and more of his friends would be arriving later.

They were in for a long night, but it wasn't as if there was anything better to do. Belize was a diverse nation, and Kent and his buddies were in the majority culture, the kriol. But — as Kent suspected was true everywhere in the world — the darker you were, the less chance you had of getting a decent job.

"Spanish man build the house, Chiney man cook the food, White man pay the bills, Black man lay de pipe!" as Supa G had said. Well, it beat being Maya. Those poor bastards got the worse of everyone. And they didn't even smell as bad as Mennonites.

They'd be waiting for "The Falcon," all right. He looked competent enough to come back with something worth fencing. And no matter how heroic he looked now, the foreigner wasn't going to be fit for any kind of fight when he came back.

First he had to climb down almost a hundred feet of wooden ladder. Humidity and the jungle had done a number on the Mayan's grand entrance. That's how Whistler had taken his fall. Then a longer climb and crawl and scramble to get to where anything worth stealing might be.

Oh, yes. He'd be dirty and sore and exhausted when he popped his head up again. And that was before he met "Hormiga Veinticuatro." The sting of the bullet ant hurt as bad as a real bullet. One of them would have you dizzy with pain. Four, and you'd be delirious with it — and the cave entrance was crawling with bullet ants.

Once the explorer was safely out of sight there was a rustling in the heliconias as Whistler crept out to share a Belikin with Kent. Breath hissed through the new gap in his smile. Heh. One of the scientists that had visited Midnight Terror Cave had gathered a handful of teeth to send them off to California to be analyzed. Serve the stupid bastards right if they spent all that money looking at teeth they could find on the floor of any local bar after a good night.

* * *

Carlos was quiet for a white man. Kent almost didn't hear him ascending the old Mayan ladder. His friends barely had time to get back under cover.

And, yeah, his outfit looked dirtier, but he seemed as fit and energetic as when he had gone into the hole so many hours ago. He made a big show of pulling the shoulder bag off and setting it on the ground. It was heavy…too heavy, much too heavy. Kent blinked against the light of the small fire, certain he could see the gleam of gold right through the weave of the heavy canvass.

His friends moved first. Tommy, who insisted on being called "Tommy Goff," and maybe this night would finally earn it. Because he moved as fast as the yellow-jawed Fer-de-Lance, charging the foreigner from behind.

Carlos slipped the punch and kicked in return. Hard. Unbelievably hard. The crack of a breaking bone split the night air. Jamal almost turned back at that but Whistler pressed on with drunken bravado, pulling a cheap chinee-store knife from his pocket. Carlos put them both down with vicious slashes of hand and elbow.

This…this was bad. Kent fumbled for the most expensive thing he owned. The Makarov gleamed reassuringly in the firelight. He'd spent ages polishing it. He meant to retreat, to leave this alone as a bad job, but the white black man moved too fast and Kent pulled the trigger without even meaning to.

There was a flash of light around the man and the bullet bounced off of thin air.

"Oh," Carlos said, breathing no harder than if he had been strolling on the beach. "I wish you hadn't done that," he said. "You would have been an excellent witness for the latest exploit of The Falcon."

Kent saw the gleam of gold, now. The man was pulling some sort of odd jewelry over his hand even as he spoke. Kent froze, unsure whether to throw the prized Makarov away as a peace offering or just start running now.

"So be it," The Falcon said. "Adios, Satipo." He raised his hand and golden light flared and, like the children whose bones lay deep under their feet, Kent's problems were over.

* * *

SGC Mess, Level 22, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

Lara was intrigued by the mention of Hathor. She knew the name, of course. A cow-horned Egyptian fertility goddess, as well as goddess of love, motherhood, joy, mining(!), and (before one of those inevitable downgrades as the pantheon was re-organized once again) the very sky itself. Outside of antiquities grad students, though, you rarely heard people speak of her as if they were on a first-name basis. And Lara had not missed Colonel O'Neill's wince at her name, either.

Hathor, like many of the Egyptian gods, was often depicted with the uraeus — the rearing cobra shape shared by the _zat'nik'tel _she had found in the Valley of Kings. The same kind of weapon that had been employed against her by someone seemingly quite familiar with their use. It was patently obvious that at least one figure taking the name of one of the old Egyptian gods had been playing around with some surprisingly high technology.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time she'd encountered something like that.

Teal'c, satisfied with the cartographic implications of Daniel Jackson's coffee, now had a different question. "This 'Horus' you speak of," he said now. "I am not familiar with that name."

"The Egyptian vowel problem again," Daniel grimaced. The hieroglyphic system, like many ancient writing systems, did not record vowel sounds. "Ah, wait. I think we managed to link him to a System Lord named 'Heru'ur.' Son of Hathor…and Ra."

Colonel O'Neill reacted to the latter name as well, Lara saw. With a look of what she could only interpret as satisfaction in a job well done. He caught her looking, and turned to face her full on. "Ever kill a god, Miss Croft?"

Lara Croft met his gaze evenly. "Not this week," she replied.

He blinked at that. Then stood up. "Daniel," he said. "A word."

The place had nearly cleared out. Lara noted few uniforms still around, and assumed the rest had to go back on shift somewhere within the sprawling base. Obvious civilians were the diners now, many with that slightly unkempt look that seemed to mark scientists across every profession.

One young officer dithering over the late luncheon menu with a distracted air split the division quite neatly herself. The blue cargo pants and shapeless tunic marked her as military, but the short blond hair was as untamed as any scientist's; Lara found it unlikely it met military regs.

The giant's face opened in a wide smile. "Major Carter!" he called.

The woman angled their way. "I thought I'd find you all here," she said. She glanced at the empty places, then looked out across the mess hall.

"The boys?" Lara answered the unsaid question. "Over there, fighting over me."

For a moment the young woman looked stricken, before she managed to cover it up. _Just because you wear long sleeves, hon, doesn't mean you need to keep your heart pinned there, _Lara thought. "The other members of your team are still debating whether to let me in on the deep dark secret here," she said, taking pity.

"How did you know we were a team?" the young officer asked in honest puzzlement.

"I'm a trained observer. Besides, you're all wearing that same patch with the big '1' on it, even Daniel-who-can't-be-bothered-to-button-his-shirt. Except for handsome here, who prefers to show off his biceps." She nodded to Teal'c in a way that removed the rancor from her comment.

Honestly, if they were trying to keep the Giza artifact a secret, they probably shouldn't have a picture of the thing on all their shoulder patches. It made them look like the clumsy sort of villain organization the _Thunderbirds_ fought on Saturday morning telly.

"Samantha Carter," the woman held out her hand. Then grimaced. "I usually go by 'Sam,'" she hastened to add.

"I have a good friend who feels the same way," Lara replied, taking her hand. "Sam Nishimura. Her father financed the first expedition I was part of." They hadn't found anything, not that time. If they had been willing to listen to Lara, she would have suggested they try searching further to the East.

"Lady Croft has been explaining about salt." Teal'c spoke then. "Will you join us, Major Carter? I believe there is an open seat in France."

Sam took the indicated seat, a little warily. "I'm not sure the day is long enough to explain where all of that came from," she said. "I just have time for a bite and run. Doctor Lee and I are just waiting on the machine shop so we can finish assembling our prototype T-Tauri…" Her eye was caught by the colorful illustration Daniel had pulled out. "Wait. Is that the Voynich? I _taught_ from that. At the Academy."

"You taught a course on it?" Lara asked.

"No, not like that," Sam laughed. "It was for my crypto course. I talked about the Navaho code-talkers during World War Two. Then I brought out the Voynich Manuscript. It's a fascinating problem. As I understand it, the best guess anyone has it that it is written in an idioglossia; in a unique language shared by no other human being."

Daniel Jackson had returned to the table during the later part of this. The Colonel was no-where to be seen. Probably out firing rifles at deer or something. "The way I heard it, they tried all the usual deciphering methods on it and were unable to crack the code," Daniel said. "Hi, Sam," he added.

"That's true, but that wasn't the interesting thing," Sam said. She leaned in, her eyes sparkling. Again Lara was seeing someone with the passion for discovery. If anything, Sam had it even worse than Daniel did. Lara wondered if she knew how cute it looked on her. "The NSA took a couple cracks at it. Friedman, working in the 1940's, put the entire text on IBM punch cards, but this wasn't like _Enigma_. As far as anyone has been able to work out, it isn't in code."

"A lot of people were toying with codes in the 1500's," Daniel objected. "And then there's Da Vinci, keeping his notebooks in mirror writing."

"And Galileo wrote an unpronounceable anagram to hide his discovery of the rings of Saturn. Daniel, the interesting thing is that statistical analysis reveals patterns consistent with natural language. The word entropy, for instance, is about ten bits per word. That's similar to English. Also, the handwriting is extremely fluid; cyphered texts are typically entered letter by letter, and coded texts proceed in a similar stop-and-go pattern as new code groups are generated in turn. It ties right into information theory; codes and cyphers show the most regularity, and that's what allows us to break them. Natural languages are denser, and harder to interpret."

"I see the problem," Lara said. "It's like Linear A. Without a Rosetta Stone, you've got no-where to start."

"That's the point I was trying to make in my crypto course," Sam agreed. "Natural languages are largely hermetic. There's no direct relationship between the concept being expressed and the form of expression, outside of onomatopoeia and a handful of simpler pictograms — and even those are up for interpretation."

"Hermetic," Daniel Jackson said.

Lara's eyes met his. Her thoughts had gone in exactly the same direction. "Hermes Trismegistus," she said.

"Eh?" Samantha Carter hadn't followed.

"Hermeticism, a Renaissance religious philosophy combining theurgy, astrology, and alchemy, based on secret texts said to be written by one 'Hermes Trismegistus.' The term 'hermetic seal' came out of hermeticism," Daniel explained.

"And as you might guess from the name, this 'thrice-great' character combined elements of the Greek god Hermes with an Egyptian god of magic — Thoth. Funny how Egyptian gods keep showing up in conversation around here, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't know about that." Sam stood up, looking guilty. The others excused themselves shortly after that, and Lara was left alone contemplating the remains of her salad.

"As above, so below," she said aloud. It was the guiding maxim of the Hermetics. And she couldn't help but find herself thinking that it described her own life as well. She went into the Earth, down far below in search of ancient secrets. But they had a rather nasty habit of turning into big problems for those above ground when they had been unearthed.

Why was she so driven to discover the darkest secrets of the past? Her desire to find out what had happened to her parents couldn't explain all of it. That was too pat, too pop-psychology simple an answer. More and more, she felt she was slipping in her effort to look into the abyss without too much of it looking back into her. She'd killed too many on her expeditions, and she didn't just mean tigers (as bad as that was in itself). If she took a long honest look at her history, she'd been getting worse, too. Shorter-tempered, more arrogant, quicker to resort to violence.

And now she was here, in this fantastical bunker deep underneath a nadir of the Cold War, an elaborate boy's toy designed with one purpose; to kill everyone on the planet rather than lose a war, and she wasn't at all certain why she had come.

Carlos had given her a single word, and she'd flown from Cairo, from half a world away, to struggle into the depths of Cheyenne Mountain. Was this really the best way to solve the question of the Horus Draught? Would that even be an important question, if she hadn't discovered she herself was part of that ancient story?

Lara sighed. She missed the innocent joy she had once taken in archaeology. The thrill of discovery, without what had of late become inevitable terror and loss quickly following. That time of her life had ended at Tiwanaku.

She could still remember far too clearly the ground shaking as thousands of tons of stone collapsed about them, the entire structure caving in…and the lake pouring in through the gaps. The screaming — her own screaming — unheard. Her best friend's horrified face as the raging water closed over her head.

And she still blamed herself. She understood, now, intellectually, that Amanda had never been in it for the same reasons as she. Her friend had been driven by the desire for thrills and notoriety, not by the passion to understand the cultures of the past. And that may have been part of why Amanda lacked the equipment to deal sanely with her feelings of being left for dead in a collapsing monument.

No, she was not to blame for how Amanda had turned out. That road was traveled. And her one-time friend had chosen it. But Lara could still blame herself for not being able to rescue her then, back then, when they were both still young and neither had yet chosen to invite the abyss in.

She thought again of the joy in Samantha Carter's face as she explained the science she was so passionate about. It was the face of an Amanda that might have been, in some alternate imaginary world where Lara herself had not turned into a dangerous loner more known for her twin pistols and her short shorts than for her skills in archaeology.

Lara gave up on her salad and dropped her fork into the Adriatic. She stood, and she left the mess hall.


	11. Chapter 10: The Golden City

Sorry about Prague. I've been in Salzburg and Berlin, in Paris and even in Fulda, but that's my only experience with old European towns. And there's so much history to take in with Prague. The Jewish experience alone…and I can't leave that alone, because there's no way the Tomb Raider is going to delve for secrets around an alchemist's lair in Prague without encountering the work of a certain High Rabbi…So expect rampant stereotyping, excruciating error, and really, really thin description.

* * *

Prague Ruzyně International Airport, Czech Republic, 50°06′03″N 014°15′36″E

* * *

Rani wasn't fond of short-haul, but at two years BA still considered her a new hire. Working the LHR/PRG loop at least meant she wasn't the most junior on the crew, meaning she didn't have to work the village. And with a two hour flight she could get three turnarounds in a row and still catch the Q Runner back to the garden in time for a drink.

Club Europe service was only a step up from Economy, but this was the afternoon flight; sandwiches and scones only (and tea of course). Plus Speedbird858 — an older Airbus A320 — had left Terminal 5 less than half full. That left Rani more time for her favorite hobby; people-watching.

There was a trio that caught her eye particularly (and not just because they were in 8, just behind the doors. And Rani's assigned jumpseat, conveniently enough.) A Mutt-and-Jeff pair on the left, and a woman in the solo seat on the right.

The older man was fit and lean, had close-cropped hair just starting to turn color, and looked scrumptious in jeans and bomber jacket. He also had that ineffable quality of pilots and active-duty military; a sort of calm patience combined with total awareness. Rani thought she spotted him reacting to the aircraft's motions and so she was going to guess both; a military pilot.

His contrasting partner had longish hair, glasses, and the jeans and blazer practically screamed "interview clothes." And he obviously had no idea how cute he was. Even a two hour flight was too long for him to keep still; he'd covered the tiny drop-down table with paperwork that included a book so old-fashioned it looked like it came out of Harry Potter.

The woman, on the other hand. She was elegant, dangerously competent-looking, and oddly familiar. She was obviously another experienced traveller; black Zella leggings tucked into soft-sided boots (tight shoes were no fun when your feet started to swell at altitude), raw silk blouse, cashmere scarf (to ward off cabin chill,) and as carry-on for the end of the flight, a collarless faux-leather jacket in a pleasing mocha.

From her accent, she was a fellow Brit. Rani was going to guess one of the home counties, possibly Surrey. And she was as relaxed as the military pilot. Which is to say, as relaxed as a cat. Only with her, you could see the sheathed claws. She was liked a loaded crossbow; quiet now, but capable of exploding into activity in a fraction of a second.

According to the Captain's laconic announcement, the weather was chilly and drizzling this afternoon. It made the red tile roofs glisten during approach, at least, but it wasn't going to be a day for walking tours of the old city. Not that her trio looked like they were here on vacation.

This leg, "Captain Kangaroo" avoided a two-for-one special when wheels hit tarmac. Rani hoped "her" military pilot appreciated that. Then "Flight attendants, doors to arrival, crosscheck and all call" came over the PA, followed shortly by the woodwind and string flurries of _The Moldau. _Rani had her landing lips on already. She stood, attended to her door, and put on the British charm to welcome her passengers to Prague.

* * *

"You've been in Prague before," Daniel stated, seeing how the Colonel angled immediately towards the taxi stand.

"Years ago," Colonel O'Neill said blandly. "When I was here, there was a Soviet tank parked in front of my hotel," he said. "They painted it pink," he added.

"Oh," said Daniel. "Oh," he said when the other shoe dropped. "And that means your assignment was…"

"Classified," O'Neill confirmed, in a way that made it clear the subject was closed.

"Funny thing, though," Daniel said. "The eighth of May is tomorrow. Liberation Day," he said when O'Neill didn't respond. "The tank is gone, but the celebration is still on."

"Some liberation," Colonel O'Neill said. Daniel was reminded that his friend had fought the Cold War. Lost friends in it, for that matter.

"Jack, they were suffering through the German Occupation. And the Nazi's were rough on them. _Heydrich_ was here."

"Until a couple of local boys jumped him," O'Neill said. "Operation Anthropoid. What? You think I don't read history?"

"Only the parts with guns in them."

"Boys!" Lara seemed amused. A black BMX 5X had pulled into the loading zone. "The car from our hotel is here."

* * *

Alchymist Grand Hotel (and spa) was in _Malá Strana_; Lesser Town; narrow twisting cobblestone streets and historic buildings on the left bank of the Vltava, in the shadow of Prague Castle and a five minute walk from Charles Bridge. The hotel was in a much-rebuilt and expanded baroque building; part of the lower tower owed its original form to fortification of what in 1257 had been a walled town. Legend had it had been built on top of a former nunnery, and further legend held that one of the former nuns continued to haunt the neighborhood. If so, she'd be in good company in this town full of ghosts.

The concierge met them at the door. Daniel hadn't felt this out of his social class since Catherine Langford used to treat him to dinner. He muttered a quick "_Dobrý den,_" but was otherwise silent as Lara Croft signed them in.

"Lady Croft," the concierge said in English after they'd signed the register. "Your packages arrived earlier."

He brought out two parcels of similar size, about the size of a diplomatic pouch. One appeared to be quite heavy. The other was soft, wrapped in multiple layers of fancy paper, and the _par avion_ stamps looked British. "Ah," Lara said. "My order from Denichi found me here. _Děkuji._"

"_Rádo se stalo._" The concierge gestured a boy forward to take the bags, then led them up to their suite.

Lara had picked the Tower suite. She was paying for it. "You boys get the lower room," she said. "I asked to have twins put in. I get the loft."

Daniel was a little aghast at the room. The exposed beams gave it a friendly, rustic feel, but that's where it stopped. Each piece of furniture looked like it belonged in a museum. And there was, of all things, a bathtub in the middle. Decorously dressed in wooden panelling, but still a bathtub.

On the other hand, the view was incredible. The green copper of the great dome of St Nicholas Church framed a long view across the rooftops of Malá Strana as they descended down the long slope from the center of the original walled town to the dark waters of the Vltava.

"Let's meet for a bite at nineteen hours." Lara Croft paused on the short flight to her own room. "Catch a little nap if you can — it's going to be a long night."

* * *

The "boys" were dressed as they had been on the plane as Lara came back down. She, on the other hand, was bare-legged under a long black coat, with a pair of serious-looking boots on her feet. Despite the lowering light of evening her eyes were behind narrow-lensed sunglasses. Red tinted. The whole ensemble seriously made her look like she was twenty-something and going out clubbing at some Goth place on the wrong side of the tracks.

"Well," drawled the Colonel, "If it's all right by you…"

"No, Jack." Daniel stopped him. "You are not going to go find yourself a McDonald's. Come on; be adventurous for once!"

"Don't worry," Lara smiled archly. "You'll like U Glaubicu. Cheap, hearty food. Urquell on tap." Jack's ears perked up. "They're built on top of an old brewery." She moved in for the kill. "Beer hall downstairs."

"I wish all my dinner dates thought like you," Jack said.

Prague was a night-time town. At least here in Lesser Town, the crowds were manageable as long as they stayed off Nerudova and far away from the town square. Lantern light gleamed off the still-wet cobbles, cast long shadows from the baroque detailing, and made the lighter colors of the walls (mostly a warm yellow that looked positively Tuscan) glow. No wonder feature films were coming here when they wanted the look of an old European town.

Soon enough they were tucked in around a dark wood table under a low barrel-vaulted ceiling with exposed stonework, and tank beer and hot greasy sausages were taking the edge off the long flight and the hunger left from tiny British Airways sandwiches. (Although Daniel thought the Scottish smoked salmon had been quite good).

"Look, all I'm saying is those tanks are the reason most of these historic buildings survived." Daniel couldn't quite let it go.

"Didn't work out so hot for Bunichenko, though." Jack had finally been pushed too far to answer with one of his usual quips. "The uprising was doomed," he said. "Wrong place, wrong time. The resistance kicked butt on the occupying forces, sure, but the Waffen-SS came back with heavy equipment. And Luftwaffe support."

He turned to Lara to include her in. "The ROA was a bunch of Soviet POWs plus some White Russians and anti-communists. The Germans gave them weapons, but when the _heer_ started shelling Prague General Bunichenko turned his guns on his former masters. They saved the city, sure. And when they got back to Mother Russia…the Soviets hung them."

Daniel didn't miss the object lesson. He was also surprised by how much Jack seemed to know about the Prague Uprising. He'd known, in a distant way, that both he and Hammond — like many military officers — had studied military history. This was one of the few times it was made clear how serious that study had been.

Their food arrived, delivered by a hard-worked but smiling young woman in a short black dress. Traditional Czech food; roast beef in beer with bread for Jack, stuffed potato dumplings for Daniel, and Lara had ordered duck. Plus the inevitable red cabbage, more of the hot sausages, and of course more beer.

"So what is this Special Collection of Prague Castle?" Daniel asked around a mouthful. "I haven't heard of it."

"Now therein hangs a tale," Lara answered with an arch smile. She didn't answer immediately but continued digging in. She had a hearty appetite — like Carter did, on the rare occasions that the scientist remembered that she needed to eat.

"Special Collections, in library science," Lara said when she was ready to speak, "just means closed stacks. Protection for fragile and valuable manuscripts. The Rare Book &amp; Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois, for instance. Or, for that matter, the Library of Congress. The materials of archaeology tend to, by their nature, always be under physical security; behind glass when displayed to the public, accessed only by legitimate professionals when in storage."

She smiled. "This isn't restricted to just archaeology," she said. "You don't exactly stroll in to the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at Johnson Space Center and ask to borrow a moon rock."

"Yes," Daniel said. "It's a real problem for researchers who are out of the mainstream. You don't get access if you don't have the proper academic track record. And a lot of collections are pretty protective even so. A paleontologist friend of mine once said it is like pulling teeth from a theriodont to get more than a plaster cast out of Berlin."

Jack drank his beer. He wasn't going to ask. Not a word.

"Well," Lara said, "There's a step beyond that. There are collections you don't even _hear _ about until you've made yourself known among the right circles. Jackson, the artifacts you speak of are fragile and need to be protected from the ham-handed amateur. The artifacts I'm talking about now…the amateur needs to be protected from _them._"

"Like what?" Daniel was honestly confused.

"Like the Colonel's favorite toy." Daniel still didn't get it. "The _zat'nik'tel._" Lara said.

"Oh!" Daniel said, then. "You mean like the Star…" he stopped suddenly, guilty.

"Yes." Lara smiled thinly. "Like that." She swallowed a mouthful of beer and pushed her first plate away. "There are secrets kept in certain repositories around the world. Many are held by governments; the Atrocity Archives in Copenhagen, your own Area 51. Others are private; the 'Miskatonic' rare books collection at Brown, or a certain warehouse in South Dakota."

Jack broke his silence. "How did _you_ find out about Area 51?" he demanded.

Lara was unfazed. "I just told you," she said. "I have a certain reputation for problem solving. And people know I can be trusted to keep their secrets."

Their server came by, then. Lara was silent until she left. Then she sighed. "It's not a community, per se. It's more like a very loose network. Individual researchers, operating on a need-to-know basis. Not a lot of symposiums!"

"It sounds…lonely." Daniel said.

"Somehow," Lara said dryly, "I think you recognize the feeling. Both of you," she added.

Daniel took a long drink of his beer. _Whoops_, he thought. _This is a good Czech ale, not light American beer. And I'm working._ He put it down quickly. "I think," he said, "I think I know what you mean. I had some ideas about Pre-Dynastic Egypt but no-one took me seriously…until Catherine. She approached me, and introduced me to, well," he gestured in Jack's direction.

"She chose well," Lara told him. She leaned towards him with a rather scary little smile. "You're still alive."

* * *

It was not a small castle.

Prague Castle sprawled over acres of hilltop, in a profusion of architectural styles ranging from Roman through to renovations made during the First Republic early in the 20th century. It made the Tower of London look small and orderly.

Daniel had been there in the daytime, seen the changing of the guard in their powder-blue uniforms. That was quite different than approaching it at night, with the dark gothic mass of St. Vitus Cathedral looming into the overcast sky.

The security wasn't just for show, either. Not with the Bohemian Crown Jewels and the President of the Czech Republic both in residence within the sprawling arrangement of courtyards and gardens and chapels and palaces.

They entered near the grim Daliborka Tower and came up Golden Lane; a row of dwarf-sized, multi-colored houses just inside the outer wall. Despite popular belief it had been named for goldsmiths, not alchemists. Even though they were little more than museum displays and trinket shops now (all closed for the night), in the past more than a few persons of note had stayed here. Including Kafka; no wonder he came to pen a book set in the shadow of a monumental brooding castle.

Daniel would have mentioned a few of these things on their nearly-silent stroll, but he knew Jack would shut him up. And it wouldn't be as much fun lecturing Lara; she could probably lecture him right back.

They were coming in the back way, skipping the grand entrance and the dark stone of the baroque Matthias Gate. An escort met them at the foot of Golden Lane and took them through several interior courtyards and at last to the northern wing of the New Palace. This was a mostly-19th century amalgamation of several previous buildings, including the Royal Stables, and was brightly lit up and active (as befit the offices of the President of the Republic.) Daniel was just as glad they were in a quiet and distant wing of the sprawling building.

The Prague Castle Picture Gallery was dimly lit (to save the fragile pigments) and empty — save for a lit office off on of the smaller galleries.

* * *

"My name is Jana Rubešova." The woman met them at the door, her hand out. "I am the curator of the Special Collection." She was blond enough to be wearing a dirndl and holding out a foaming stein in München, but her face was serious, with an intense intelligence, and she was dressed to move in dark slacks, tailored jacket, and short calf-skin boots.

She gestured the three into her office and dismissed their guide. "Lady Croft, I can't tell you how relieved I was to get your call. Your timing is impeccable. Ah, and these are your assistants?" She looked doubtfully at Jack. "You aren't quite as I pictured you."

Lara chuckled. "Doctor Rubešova, this is Doctor Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill. I left Zip and Alister at home," she said. "They don't travel well," she added.

"Daniel Jackson? I know that name. Don't tell me; it will come to me."

"You said you had a problem."

"Yes. There's a problem with the Special Collection, and we could use your help. Here; you'd better come this way." Jana stood, and led them through a connecting door. The passage here was more utilitarian, for all that it was still obviously inside a palace. Then into a larger room of which most of was blocked off by a steel grate.

"Pardon while I turn off the security system," Jana said. She took out a magnetic key card, pressed several numbers on a key pad. Rotating safety lights flicked on and the steel barrier rolled away almost silently on well-made bearings.

Daniel saw the old books in the plexi-fronted cabinets and almost leapt inside. "Some of what little remains of Emperor Rudolph II's grand Kunstkammer," Jana said, almost apologetically. "The picture gallery upstairs started with his collection, too. He was an incredible collector. What's more, his collection was _cataloged. _He invented one of the first classification systems."

"Cabinets of Curiosities were the rage in Europe," Daniel explained to Jack. "They weren't kept to do research on, though. They were kept to admire and to show off to friends. Everything went in them; unusual stones, religious relics, paintings and artwork, clockwork marvels, archaeological artifacts. All jumbled together, sorted only by what looked good next to each other."

"So it's a museum," Jack said. "Can we go back to the hotel now?"

"Well, we'd better get started," Jana said. She ignored the books and file boxes and went for a door in back, remarkable only for being steel clad. There was another code key on this one. "We keep the vault keys in here," she said. "As well as other supplies. Here; take these flashlights. And this medical kit."

"Jack?" Lara gestured. "Time to kit up. You boys carrying?"

"Are we…what?" Daniel said. "No!"

"Yes," Jack said blandly.

"_What?!_"

"VP-70," Jack said. "For one."

Lara nodded. "I'm good, Jana. Perhaps one of those CZ-75's I see there for Daniel?"

The words tumbled up against Daniel's teeth. "Gaah!" is all he could say for a minute. At last he got it out. "This is a museum!" he said.

"_This_ is," Jana agreed. "Where we are going is not. The Special Collection — the _real_ Special Collection — is at Castle Houska."

"And why am I not surprised?" Lara seemed to recognize the name.

"There is a problem in the Special Collection, Doctor Jackson," Jana said firmly. "And we think it is trying to get out."


	12. Chapter 11: Castle Houska

I moved Hrad Houska much closer to central Prague, placing it in the middle of a nature reserve. Nor is that the only change I've made to the building, as this is the first classic-style Tomb Raider "tomb" in the narrative.

Jana gets her name corrected here, too. I'm not good at Czech declensions, so I'll cross my fingers and call her "Rubešová."

* * *

Hrad Houska, Czech Republic, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

Jana's car was a black Škoda. The Octavia vRS, in fact, which had surprising pick-up for plain-looking sedan. They headed almost due North up U Prašného mostu, crossing Patočkova — the big artery that connected E48 on the West with 8 running into the North - and through the roundabout at the center of Praha 6. Ponderous stucco-colored buildings passed them in the unflattering mercury light, looking very Eastern Block.

"James A. Michner said once that all collectors are a little mad," Jana talked as she drove. "Or rather, it is only collecting that keeps them sane. Emperor Rudolph II was in his later years obsessed, reclusive, melancholy, mad, deposed, and dead — more or less in that order. He collected because all wealthy men of that time with aspirations towards social status collected, because he was truly interested in the mysteries of the world, and because he (like so many) was looking for immortality. But mostly he collected because he loved to collect."

"Thus the greatest Cabinet of Curiosities in Europe," Lara Croft said from the passenger seat. Daniel was sharing the rear seat with Jack. He was still trying to figure out when a trip to a museum had turned into a late-night drive through the rainy streets of Prague in a car filled with people with guns.

"History records him as an ineffectual ruler," Jana continued. "He fought the Turks but mostly lost. He was caught between the Pope and the Protestants, though he did manage to stave off the inevitable conflict for a few decades."

"Aka the Thirty Years War," Daniel could not resist saying to Jack. Who grunted as if in pain.

"At the height of his power Prague was the center of culture on the continent. Painters, sculptors, musicians, goldsmiths came here to show off. As did astronomers, alchemists, psychics, and frauds. Rudolph II hosted them all. The way to get into his good graces was to bring something interesting for his collection. And it must have been a heady time; the Age of Reason, at the cusp of the scientific revolution, bringing in the great minds of the age and working on some of the monumental questions of life."

"You're going somewhere with this," Lara said. "What happened?"

"He succeeded."

The road was wider now, a full divided highway. Jana opened up and the little straight-four hammered under the turbocharger. A distinctive and unholy smell worked its way through the windows and Daniel managed to guess they were passing, not just close to a bend of the Vlata, but to the municipal waste treatment plant for the city.

"All we know," Jana said, "Is that in the final years of his life he retreated into the privacy of the Royal Palace, holding his healing crystals and his unicorn horn close. After his death, many of the great artworks — the Dürer's and the Breughel's — were sold off to pay debts. A number managed to make it to Vienna, itself re-established as the official seat of the Holy Roman Empire, but there were still hundreds of items left to be looted by Maximilian of Bavaria at the start of the Thirty Years War. And there was _still_ a huge collection of artwork and clockwork and stuffed animals (the live ones had mostly died off) as late as 1648, enough for Count Hans Christoff von Königsmarck to demand a proper inventory of all he had captured."

It was dark in the back of the car, but Daniel could see Jack O'Neill had a growing look of horror on his face. He seemed to be mouthing words. "There's three of them now," he seemed to be saying. "Three of them."

Daniel was ready to sympathize himself. Archaeology he could do. Linguistics, he was a master. But the history of Europe was just a little too…_recent_…for him.

"So I guess some of his collection got hidden," he ventured.

"Yes," Jana said. "Somewhere close to the start of the 17th century. Something the Emperor got hold off that even he was unwilling to keep close. He took over — in great secrecy — a small gothic castle Ottokar II of Bohemia had used as an administrative center. It was refurbished in a rather unusual style; no outward fortifications other than the sheer cliff it was built on, but strong walls and arrow slits facing _in_."

"Hrad Houska," Daniel didn't hesitate.

"In one. The Special Collection — the _real_ Special Collection — is hidden in the catacombs below."

There was a note to her voice that said this wasn't the end of the story, though. Daniel leapt on the conversational thread before Lara could get a hold of it. "But someone found it. After the Emperor's death."

"Oh, much later than that. The treasures were well hidden."

"Don't tell me. No. Oh, it's Indiana Jones all over again, isn't it! The Nazi's dug them up!"

Jack seemed to perk up a little at that. Daniel wasn't sure why. Maybe he had fond memories of late-night games of Castle Wolfenstein?

"We're not sure what they did," Jana said seriously. "No-one knows, not any more. The SS was heavily invested there during the Occupation, and it is too far from any rail line or industry to be of strategic importance. There's some evidence that Himmler visited himself, but in any case, Ahnenerbe fingerprints were all over it."

She sighed. "They cleaned up good, though. Sealed the tunnel and burned all their documents, leaving nothing but fresh-turned earth and land mines behind. Which was a blessing in disguise; the communists never figured out there was anything to look into at Houska. Following the Velvet Revolution the new Republic was able to jingle some leftover keys in the direction of trusted people that could put a public face on ownership of the old building. And mention frequently the unexploded land mines to keep random explorers from getting too nosy."

"They obviously never met _her_," Jack said _sotto vocce_, indicating Lara Croft. Daniel was impressed. Jack might pretend boredom and confusion, but he was able to absorb a lot more than many people were willing to give him credit for.

And Daniel had to agree. From what he'd heard and seen, the woman in the front seat would consider a few unexploded German mines nothing but an added spice to an evening's adventure.

"So what _is_ down there?" he asked. "What did the Republic finally inherit?"

"We don't know," Jana had to say. "We're discovered a number of interesting things already, but it is slow work. We've hardly made it through the first stages. Which is why, among other things, my offices are at the New Palace, not out here in the woods."

* * *

It was a brown, square, looming but otherwise unprepossessing gothic building with three rows of narrow leaded windows under a copper roof; a square, surrounding an inner courtyard, and backed up against the sheer drop into the Šárka Gorge. Named after a woman warrior in one of those typical chilly Central European tales of doomed love, vengence, and betrayal, if Daniel was remembering correctly.

Architectural lighting hidden in the shrubbery gave it an ersatz spooky glow, with the garish museum signs in more of the same theme. Daniel found the quieter glow of an idling "unmarked" car, the police safety tape, and the men in black fatigues standing oh so nonchalantly near a lot more spooky.

Lara gave a short snort of laughter. "Purloined letter, eh? Ghost tours, midnight organ recitals, Oija Boards in the gift shop…"

"Like expecting to find the real Calesvol at a tawdry Arthurian-themed attraction in Cornwall?"

Lara turned at this. "When this is over," she said to Jana, "You and I should have a nice long chat."

_Calecvol?_ Daniel thought. _That's a Cornish cognate of Caledfwlch, Latinized as Caliburnus, that is to say…_ "Excalibur!" he said aloud.

"The sword in the stone?" Jack asked.

"It's not the sword in the stone!" Daniel objected reflexively.

Lara Croft laughed. "Don't tell Alister this, but Mallory records it both ways."

"Doctor Rubešova?" another of the efficient-looking guards approached. There was a quick bit of Czech — unfortunately not one of Daniel's languages, although he caught the usual gloss of loan-words and shared slavic roots with the modern Russian he _was_ fluent in. This could often be misleading, but in this case, "We're ready for you," "Do you trust these people?" and "Come with me," were clear enough from context.

Passing the misleading facade, there were soon in a wide utilitarian corridor. Very wide; although the main entrance had not been cleared since the Ahnenerbe collapsed it, it was wide enough to drive a truck down. At the end was an extremely imposing door of rusted steel, huge bolts savagely driven into the old stones.

"Doctor Rádsetoulal was working on something inside," Jana stopped at the door. "He may have gone beyond the work plan he filed. The first we knew of trouble was when the alarms were tripped."

There was a short siren, then a mechanical grinding noise as the door began to drag upwards. It was mostly dark inside except for red emergency lighting, and something not far inside that fitfully spat fat sparks and made the air smell of ozone. Rust and stone dust filtered down as the door moved, further obscuring the view.

"Doctor Rádsetoulal activated the old Ahnenerbe security system." Jana had to raise her voice agains the noise. "Unfortunately," she said, "The only key to disarm that system was on his person…"

The door was fully opened now. They were looking at a long dark corridor lit only with red emergency lighting and the lightning-flashes of electrical sparks. A steel barrier that hummed with electricity sat across it, and behind was more steel, sparks, sharp pointed things, and a nasty hint of mechanisms cocked and awaiting the careless intruder.

Jack O'Neill was the first to speak. "Well," he said. "This is new."

* * *

Stargate Command, Level 22 Mess Hall, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

Major Samantha Carter was no stranger to machine tools. It went with the territory for an Astrophysics undergrad; you were always having to cobble up your own equipment. But she was a lot more comfortable at the quick-and-dirty handcraft end; cordless drills, pop-rivet guns, zip ties and of course the MacGyver standby, duct tape.

Of course, being not just Air Force but at the sharp end of aerospace, the kapton tapes she had access to were stronger than steel and had more grip power than a terrified gecko. Duct tape could hardly compete.

As fun as work was, however, inevitably one had to refuel. Sam used to have sandwiches brought up, but Janet Frasier had caught her brushing metal chips off her meal, and saw the jars of solder paste and potting compound standing open beside her coffee, and demanded a promise that Carter take her meals somewhere a little more sanitary and a lot less dangerous.

So it was that once again she was back in the Level 22 mess hall.

It felt oddly quiet with Jack and Daniel gone. Hopefully that character they were with wouldn't drag them into too much trouble. But they could handle themselves. The whole affair was puzzling. Croft had yet to explain what she was searching for when she broke into the SGC, and she'd gone haring off after some other artifact already.

Sam also had no idea why they hadn't just told her about the Stargate already. Was it that hard to explain? "Miss Croft, there's a ring of metal that was buried in Egypt. We brushed it off and hooked it up and it lets us go to other worlds. Basically a, well, call it an ancient subway system covering most of this galaxy."

The really important stuff was what was on the other side. The Goa'uld, for one. And the Goa'uld had starships. Having a Stargate wasn't necessary to suddenly find yourself part of a galactic community. It just accelerated the process.

Accelerated. Right. As far as Sam was concerned, Earth was in the position of a remote Pacific atoll that had figured out the streaks of cloud in the sky came from something called an airplane —just as the Imperial Japanese Navy was launching on Pearl Harbor. Earth needed to make the jump from dugout canoes to Avenger TBMs, and in a hurry, too, before one of those forces out there rolled right over them.

The Asgard gave them a little breathing room. It seemed the Goa'uld weren't quite willing to tangle with the little grey guys. Not yet, anyhow. But it was an unstable situation and they'd gotten the strong sense the Asgard had a lot more on their plates at the moment.

Speaking of plates. Sam had managed to fill hers with things both green and blue, and navigated to an open table — apparently without ever having opened her eyes. She sighed, and speared what she hoped was jello and not some unusual sort of seafood.

She found herself remembering that other lunch, not more than a day or two ago. The Voynich Manuscript. Something had lodged in her memory while they were discussing it, and she hadn't quite managed to tease it out yet. Something about how it looked like someone sitting down and trying to write out, longhand, the fragmented memories of a dream.

But why? Why was this analogy coming to her?

"Oho," a large voice said. There was a large man behind it, with a large black beard in foreground. "Is the porridge too cold, or just right?"

"Oh, hello, Professor Doyle. Brendon, was it?"

"No, I'm Black Bear. Brendon is Red Bear." The man gestured in a wide, practically Italian style. "The philologist." The man he indicated was slight of build and shared only the large spade-shaped beard. Which was at least red, Carter had to admit.

"Please, sit," she said. She wasn't just being polite. "Tell me what you are working on," she said. She heard herself, then shook her head with a little laugh. "I need to clear my head of my own work for a few minutes," she said apologetically.

"And you invite another scientist to talk about their work," he shook his head in return. "I'd heard you like to live dangerously!"

Carter laughed properly, then. "Really, I'm glad you joined me. We can talk about whatever you'd like, Professor." Her expression sharpened to a grin. "And on tuesdays, I'll lecture you about _my_ work."

"Consider it a pact!" Oddly enough, his plate appeared to be entirely vegetarian. He noticed her look. "This bear is not an obligate omnivore," he said.

"I'm not sure…I'm not sure there is such a thing," Carter said. "So, seriously. You are Geology, right? With the Remote Sensing Group?"

"I prefer to think they are with me. Or perhaps we are all with A.J. She seems to think the only purpose of us practical types is to generate numbers for her computers." Bear dug into his greens, thought about Sam's question. "What's to say? We're looking for strategic materials on extra-solar planets."

"Steel, oil, titanium…" Sam said.

"Naquadah," said Bear. "It's a dense quartzoid of unusual crystal structure, composed of at least one super-heavy element. Basically not found in this solar system. The trouble with searching for it is we don't know what causes formations of it — or rather, the raw ores, which are mostly found as concretions containing large phenocrysts of nearly-pure naquadah oxides. So we can't look for the usual mechanisms of uplift or ejecta. And there's nothing like a naquadah equivalent of salt domes."

"Salt domes," Sam repeated. "I know that term. Hold on…did you get your start as a petroleum geologist?"

"Guilty. Anyhow, the best we can figure is it is very rare in this galaxy, and it isn't — on a cosmological scale — well mixed. Maybe one in five hundred star systems contains enough to be worth recovery. All the natural naquadah in the Solar System, for instance, would mass about, well…" he pointed vaguely at the floor, "One or two Stargates."

"One or two…!" Sam was shocked. "That's the real numbers? That's not trace — that's quite literally astronomically small amounts."

"It makes sense, though," Bear said. "The raw elements aren't formed in stellar nucleosynthesis. At least, not the usual route."

"Now you are in my field," Sam smiled to take the bite off it. "Of course. Fusion can only account for the low end of the period table; above iron, there's a net loss in energy. Only neutron capture in energetic events — say, supernovae explosions — pushes up to the heavier elements."

Bear nodded. "As you said, not my field. As I understand it from others, though, beta decay and gamma radiation competes against the r-process to prevent formation of super-heavy elements. As fast as they can build up their nucleus, other processes strip them down. Even gold is heavy enough the neutron flux of a Type II supernovae is calculated as being insufficient. The best guess these days appears to be a rare hyper-energetic event; like a collision between neutron stars."

"Whew," Sam said. "Not an event you want to stand real close to."

"So there's some other peculiarities with the stuff. You'd think, if it gets ejected into the universe from a hypernova it would be finely dispersed. It isn't. All the statistical mapping we've been able to do says it clumps. I mean, really clumps. Like there might be one rogue planetismal of only a few million tons wandering around until it manages to get incorporated into a solar system."

"If I remember," said Sam, "Most of the gold on the Earth's surface is believed to have been delivered during the Late Heavy Bombardment. Any heavy metals earlier in Earth's formation would have sunk into the core."

"That's about what Cal Tech told me," Bear said. "What's more, naquadah seems to hit very late in the cosmological story. It ends up looking like meteoric iron. You know, the stuff that jumpstarted the Iron Age before people figured out how to smelt the raw ores?"

"So how do you find it?" Sam wanted to know.

"Magic. A.J. puts in stellar metallicity, cratering, proper motion, position in the spiral arms, lady's hemlines and the price of fruit. Then she turns the crank and the computer says, 'Try P3X-9998.'"

"I hear it's lovely this time of year," Sam said.

"She takes the bait!" Bear said.

"Oh?" Sam said. "Oh," she said. "So this wasn't a chance meeting."

"Well, I know we should really go through channels, but, Sam, we've got a little puzzle at our site and we'd love it if you could spare an hour or two to help us out…"

* * *

Hrad Houska, Czech Republic, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

The rusting, oily steel of the Ahnenerbe "security system" gleamed sullenly against red safety lights, the slow strobes of the warning lights the Czech Republic had added on top, and the oddly frequent sparks of either really old, poorly-thought out wiring or a display of power and danger designed to make anyone take a step back.

Lara Croft took a step forward. She studied the barrier thoughtfully.

"I really love what they've done with the place," Jack O'Neill said. "Really brings out the whole, you know, electrocuted to death on a wall of spikes motif."

There was a complicated affair with four large rotating tumblers set into the gate. A combination lock, obviously. Lara approached it and confidently spun one dial. Nothing happened to her. "This one will be an easy one," she said over her shoulder. "Let's try 1-8-8-9."

There was a flash of sparks. Lara leapt back. A steel spike slammed out of a hole in the ceiling just to her left, blocking the gate. They all looked up. There were three such holes, the last placed to make certain that the person entering the combination would be right below.

"So Himmler wasn't sentimental," Jack said. "If der Führer's birthday wasn't it, what about the birthday of the Third Reich?"

"1-9-3-3," Lara entered. The crash and sparks seemed angrier this time. "Last chance," she said. "How much of an egotist do you think the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel was?"

"Wait!" Daniel said. "I think there's a better answer. The Thule Society saw themselves are carrying on the great tradition of the Holy Roman Empire. Of whom Rudolph II, whose treasure this was, was one of the last monarchs."

"So, what," Lara's hand hesitated. "The coronation of Charlemagne? Perhaps Otto I? Those are only three digits. The death of Julius Caesar? The latter's more of an Italian thing, though."

"1512," Daniel said, suddenly calm. "The date of the Diet of Cologne that officially decreed that the title be changed to _Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ;_ Holy Roman Empire of the _German_ Nation."

"Or we could, you know, find a ten-foot pole," Jack said.

"1-5-1-2," Lara entered. There was a nasty, dangerous-sounding click…then the lock opened and the two deployed spikes quietly retracted again. The power and the sparks cut out and she pushed the creaking, complaining gate open. "That was the freebie," she said. "After this, it's going to be one-time pads and proper cryptologic security."

"And other defenses," Jana said. "Doctor Jackson, perhaps you should stay with me."

"Colonel?" Lara turned.

"Oh, I may tag along," Jack said. "Got nothing better to do."

Lara gave him a level gaze. "I work better alone," she said. "But you look like you can handle yourself."

"Daniel's better on the sharp end than you give him credit for," Jack said.

"I am?" Daniel said. "I mean, I am!" He wasn't so sure himself.

"All right," Lara said. "Remember; these aren't just gates designed to keep people out. They are traps designed to keep whatever was inside, in."

As she strode into the first passageway the truth of her words became extremely evident. There was a high, whining noise as electric motors started. Then a clanking of gears. Two huge spinning disks — circular saw blades, of the kind used to rip down whole logs — swung out on the end of hinged arms.

Lara had only a moment to react. She dove for the floor, rolling in a neat forward somersault.

"Lara!" Daniel cried in warning. The disks had reached the end of their travel. They flipped over, and with a grinding of gears came back along their slots. Only this time they were inches above the floor.

Lara Croft rolled to her feat and leapt up. For a long moment it looked like she wasn't going to make it; she was going to drop right amongst the blades. But in mid-air she jack-knifed convulsively then flipped, tumbling over as neat as a gymnast, her long legs flashing through the air as her body just barely cleared the whirring blades.

"Right!" she said as she landed. In one violent gesture she threw off the long coat. Then she scooped it up and hurled it right at the spinning saw blades. They chewed into it with abandon until enough fibers had wrapped around the hubs. Then there was screeching, more sparks, and a flash of fire and smoke as the motors windings caught.

The blades clattered to a stop. Daniel approached them gingerly. Then threw a leg over.

Lara Croft was standing with legs wide, facing down the passage away from them. Her hands were curled lightly, towards the butts of two pistols that hung on either side of her belt. "Daniel," she said over her shoulder. "Remember what I said in the pub? About you still being alive?"

"Um, yeah?" Daniel blinked.

"Welcome to my corner of archaeology," Lara said. She didn't even seem to be breathing heavily. "There are secrets, Daniel, that require two contradictory skill sets to plumb. One is the skill in sorting through the crystal gazers and the UFO nuts and finding the real archaeological secrets they only fumble for. You have that one."

"What's the other?"

"Surviving," Lara said shortly.


	13. Chapter 12: Geek Mythology

Somehow I forgot to put any Škoda jokes in the last chapter. A sample; "Can I get a wing mirror for a Skoda?" Answer; "Sure, that seems fair to me." (Apparently by the time Jana gets hers, though, they are getting a better reputation.)

The joke in this chapter is now SG1 gets to see Lara's world — and be as weirded out by it as she was by the SGC.

* * *

Houska Castle, Czech Republic, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

Lara Croft stood, weight on the balls of her feet, arms crooked slightly to put her hands near the grips of the two heavy pistols that hung from her belt. Bare skin gleamed in the warning lights; shed of the long coat, she was down to crop top and shorts in a dark shiny material. Serious-looking boots and a small pack that rode high on her back completed the ensemble.

Ahead, more machinery whined, more metal groaned. Two more recycled lumber-mill saw blades extracted themselves from the wall on a passage-width swing arm, and two sets of tines — like an elongated and sharpened version of the line of spikes television forecasters used to indicate high pressure systems — meshed like giant teeth in front of and behind the blades.

Another moment and she was in motion. She dived between the first set of tines and hurled herself into the air. Her gloved hands found a metal bar that was part of the mechanism for the whirling blades under her, and she swung up and over as the second set of tines clashed noisily in front of her. Then released, hurtling through the opening gap.

* * *

_This_, Lara thought, this is what she lived for. As much as the excitement of discovery, were these moments of pure action, concentration on the unforgiving knife-edge as she pitted her physical prowess and her mental agility against a sheer rock face or a savage wilderness or the hazards of a crumbling monument. Or the especial challenge of human opponents; including the long-dead creators of horrific underground traps.

The new gear was great, too. Denichi had come through with an outfit that moved as well as she did. And nicely detailed, too; dark olive in a shiny, water-shedding material, with breathable insets in a black mesh. The new pack straps reduced the shifting that had bothered her on earlier expeditions, and even the belt buckle had been re-engineered. Her latest pair of H&amp;K USP Match pistols had come straight from the gunsmith, accurized, benched, and fully shot in, and she knew she would be able to depend on them to put a round exactly where she wanted it put.

The power cables were gathered on the far side of the obstacle. Lara reached out and wrenched. More sparks added to the already high ozone content of the air in the narrow stone corridor under the old castle, and more smoke was lit by the red hazard lights. The latest set of machinery clumped to a stop and she waved her companions forward again.

_And a memory hit her. It seemed like so long ago. At the time it had felt like her first serious expedition, the first step in uncovering the mystery of her parents. She had used her climbing skills to reach a remote trigger over a massive door high up on a lonely Peruvian ridge. Gestured for her local guide, a tough little Quechua speaker of unshakeable good humor, to wait for her to descend. And then the lights of eyes appeared in the darkness pair by malevolent pair, and there was a low growling from inside the newly opened cave…_

* * *

"She's nuts, you know," Jack said. "Your colleague, I mean."

"Wha…wha…" Daniel Jackson was having trouble speaking again. "What _is_ this place?" he finally said. Jack raised an eyebrow at him. "Who would would build something like this?" the archaeologist asked.

"Hey, it's your field," Jack shrugged.

"This is _not_ how things are done," Daniel said. "If a Pharaoh's retainers wanted to keep people out, they dropped big rocks across the entrance and backfilled the passage. Not all this…" he waved wildly in the air, "choppy spinny stuff!"

"I guess the SS had a sense of humor after all," Jack said.

"Doctor Jackson has it right," Lara said as they joined her. "This isn't meant to stop people getting in. It's meant to stop other things from getting out." She pointed. There was a wad of something stuck on one of the spikes. It smelled of chemistry and decay and looked recent.

Daniel sniffed. "Formaldehyde," he said.

"They're trying to stop rogue biology teachers?" Jack dead-panned. It earned him another brief grin from Lara…from the "Tomb Raider." It suited her, Jack thought. He appreciated the outfit, too.

She was simplifying her explanation, though. The purpose of barriers like these were to slow things down. Liked barbed wire, minefields, and tank ditches, they were meant to bog down an attacking force while they brought their engineers forward. Whether you forced your way through with heavy machinery and explosives, or probed your way in with mine detectors and tin snips, it took time.

Time in which an enemy could react. The woman was crazy, there was no denying that, but choosing to go in _fast_ was a good way to catch an enemy off their guard. It was crazy, yeah. A _good_ kind of crazy.

Jack grinned. What had been billed as a boring museum visit had turned right around. "Keep taking them down," he urged. "We're happy back here."

She cast a short glance at him back over her shoulder. Apparently she hadn't missed his appreciative glances. "Oh, I bet you are."

* * *

Station One, P3X-9998

* * *

"There you go, Sam." Bear waved expansively. "Welcome to Moria."

It was horrifying. That was Samantha Carter's first thought. And it didn't get better. They'd walked up a long slope she belatedly realized was almost certainly the rim wall of an ancient crater, pushing their way through small, poison-stunted shrub. And then they were on the lip, looking down across a massive open pit mine.

That term didn't do it justice. There were multiple deep pits torn into the earth; the high hills of tailings and overburden and the deep gashes of inky black stretched out to the visual horizon. The ground had been dug, shifted, sliced, terraced in the effort to work down to every last fraction of ore-bearing rock. Nothing grew but a few weed-like grasses; everything else had long been clear-cut for the bracing walls and winch heads and rickety ladders that an army had worked. The sky was the grey of old ashes.

Sam felt her throat closing as she tried to take in the human cost. This was open-pit mining, but not with multi-ton excavators and automated crushers. No, this was stone-age technology. The barest of primitive implements, and year after year of back-breaking labor. No, worse. Sam let her eyes take in the sheer scale of the dig. Generation upon generation had toiled here, living and dying in the shadows of the great excavation.

Generation upon generation of slaves. This had been a Goa'uld planet. A whole civilization, a thousand years of ant-like toil — all at the whim of one would-be god.

"I…" Bear said. "I'm sorry." He touched her shoulder. "I didn't think. We've had time to get used to it," he said. But Sam knew what he was really saying was that not everyone reacted with the same empathy.

"What happened?" Sam said at last.

"They dug too deep." The massive, black-bearded scientist shook his head immediately. "Please forget I said that!" he apologized. "What I mean is, the mine played out. Too little return to be worth keeping at it — at least with the technology they were using."

It was the great paradox of Goa'uld technology. Outside of the ships, a few artifacts…there wasn't any. Most of their empire was stuck back in the bronze age; their rulers seemed content to loll about in barbaric splendor as long as they had enough rich fabrics, furs, and plenty of meat for their tables. Plus the odd peeled grape, Sam was sure. If Hobbes had been writing about the Goa'uld, he would have said "Nasty, brutish, and _long._" Well…at least for the elite.

It was puzzling. Sam knew all too well the long tail that stretched behind any technology, and the huge infrastructure that it made necessary. Milton Friedman's pencil was probably possible with no more than a few dozen different trades. After all, there had been illiterate peasants marking sheep with raw chunks of naturally-occurring graphite in 16th-century England. But you couldn't make a silicon chip without the ability to maintain a very hard vacuum, and that meant in turn industrial-strength alloys and techniques such as oil diffusion pumps and cryopumps.

Heck; the most common dopant in transistor junctions was gallium, which didn't occur in any mineable concentration on Earth's surface. It was produced as a byproduct of the aluminium industry; Silicon Valley was utterly dependent on the existence of a civilization with a huge appetite for that particular lightweight, malleable metal. The one didn't require the other, but basically you didn't see advanced technologies without there being, well, an advanced society having grown up behind it.

It all interconnected. The pencil had a hundred sources and a hundred trades involved in its production not because pencils required it, but because the modern pencil didn't show up until that world of Washington pines felled by a timber industry with steel tools powered by gasoline from the Middle East, and natural rubber off a Malaysian rubber plantation founded by the former British Empire and brought across the world by the cargo fleets of international trade made possible by Swiss banks…

But so far they'd seen no sign of even a technical class among the Goa'uld, much less the huge industrial footprint that would be required to develop their technologies to their present pinnacle. Sam shook her head. You could believe a pyramid-building culture might be swallowed beneath the sands given enough years, but the ruins of _modern_ Cairo would still stink of industrial alloys and un-degradable plastics and concentrated hydrocarbons ten thousand years from now. A future Daniel Jackson would have no trouble discovering remnants of _their_ civilization! Even ground down to dust, the isotope ratios would give it away.

She shook her head, aware that she had been gathering wool herself. "You were saying?" she asked of the bearded geologist.

"We brought out a mining engineer to tell us what he could gather about the geology of naquadah from how the mines had been constructed. It looks like one of our guesses may be right; this looks a lot like ancient impact crater. Multiple craters, really. The bolide broke up in the atmosphere. Unfortunately they did too thorough a job mining it; we'd love it if we had a few chunks of nickel-iron we could slice and look for Widmanstätten patterns."

"That's…interesting," Sam said. "So they collected more than the naquadah."

"Ya," Bear said. The big geologist scratched his beard absent-mindedly. "We've reconstructed most of their processing. Started with hand-sorting the more ore-rich from the tailings before it went in for crushing. We found something like the old Spanish _arreste_ in nearly perfect working condition."

Sam nodded. She wasn't an engineer, much less a mining engineer, but she grasped the basic idea. Crush the ore down, then wash it with various substances — mercury was the old way to get at gold, for instance — over multiple stages to leach out materials of increasing purity. Then one shifted over to proper industrial chemistry; Bessemer Converters, fractional distillation columns, gas centrifuges; whatever you needed to get the pure materials you wanted to feed your industrial processes.

"Well, and here's the interesting thing," Bear said, "…but I'd better show you. If you will follow me?"

Sam followed, deeper into the shadows of the torn and tortured ground of the massive mining complex.

* * *

Houska Castle, Czech Republic, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

The busy engineers of the SS had finished with saw blades and spikes. Well, at least motorized spikes. There'd been a war on, after all. The low entry passage had opened up into a high, barrel-vaulted hall. Other corridors led off to both sides, with two distinct cross-naves, and ther were lighter rectangular patches on much of the wall space.

"There must have been artwork here," Daniel pointed at the walls. "Probably went to Berlin, like a lot of Europe's treasures."

Lara snorted. "I bet they used the phrase 'degenerate art' a lot when they boxed it up."

Daniel thought about that. Rudolph II had interesting tastes. Like a lot of patrons of the arts, many of the pieces he commissioned were openly erotic. And the portraits were suitably fawning; comparing the Emperor to various famous historical personalities, and including an entire host of Christian and other symbolism subtly and not-so-subtly reinforcing the power and righteousness of his rule.

In public display had been more peculiar. One, for instance, that depicted his Royal Highness as Vertumnus, the Roman god of metamorphoses — face and body alike formed cleverly from a wide assortment of fruits and vegetables.

_What would have been down here that even the SS would have found disquieting?_ Daniel wondered. He sensed that once again he was missing something.

"What you said," he said instead, "What you said earlier about surviving. Is this what you meant?" With "this," he gestured back towards the still-smoking hallway of motorized mayhem.

"More-or-less." Lara was pre-occupied, looking very closely down each hallway opening they passed.

"More-or-less?"

"Try this," Lara said over her shoulder. "To go after something like Longinus you need the right kind of mind. Crazy enough to look for the germ of truth in old legends. Educated enough to sort out the obvious errors and falsehoods. Smart enough to work out the real story."

"Cheer up," Jack grinned, clapping Daniel on the back. "Two out of three ain't bad."

"But then comes the next of 'truth's protective layers,' to borrow a phrase. Because what you seek is in harsh, remote places. Not good places for a sheltered academic. If the wilderness doesn't get you, the professional tomb robbers and the cultists will. They say academia is brutal. Out here, when a rival stabs you in the back — it's literal."

Jack gave a short laugh. "I think you'd be surprised at how familiar that sounds. Right, Daniel?"

They'd reached the end of this section. A flight of stone stairs led them deeper underground, still. The bare bulbs strung on elderly-looking electrical wires at about railing-height did little to push away the increasingly stuffy, claustrophobic darkness of the old stone. The air felt musty to Daniel. That, and there was a cloying scent of petrol in the air.

The next space was square-roofed, with decorative pillars supporting hefty cross-beams. The great pressure above them had not been entirely kind to the architecture; in several places stone had cracked and fallen to leave raw rock exposed. Plinths stood in many of the niches that lined the walls, some of them still containing statuary — indistinct in the poor light. The floor was tiled with elaborately hand-painted stones, and above them in the shadows hovered shapes that might be some sort of complicated orrery.

A bundle of rags lay near the center of the decorated floor. The door at the far end was wide and steel-reinforced. And the smell was stronger; a blend of heated stone, petrol, and…

"Cordite," Jack said grimly.

"Jack, that's the researcher! He might still be alive…"

"Not a chance. Don't try it, Daniel. Floor is booby-trapped. This is the kill zone."

"The which?" Daniel was still looking towards the sad little bundle in the middle of the floor.

"Just like PXX-1138. Remember your buddy Woomera, and his pals? You let the enemy approach. Wait until Charlie is in the wire and busy trying to cut his way through. Then you light 'em up."

"The tiles are pressure plates," Lara was grimly amused. "I'm betting one of Rudolph's buddies set this up originally, and the SS just ramped up the effectiveness a little."

"That's," Daniel said. "That's _Latin_ on the tiles. _Cogito. Lupus est. Umbrae, mortis._ Hey…I think I can figure this one out…"

"Or we could do it my way," Lara said. She took a running leap at the wall nearest her. Hurled herself upward, and her fingers caught on a narrow nub of stone Daniel wasn't even sure he was seeing. She planted her boots, muscles tensed, and she hurled her body up again, fingers slapping for another tiny hold. In moments she was at the crown molding itself. Then her body began to sway back and forth as she swung herself along and out over the booby-trapped floor.

Jack had his gun out now, and his eyes never ceased scanning the corners of the room. "Here," he extracted one of the Czech pistols from a pocket, holding it out for Daniel without taking his eyes off the room. "Unless you want the VP70," he jiggled the oversized automatic in his dominant hand.

"I'd feel like a Mike Mignola character," Daniel said. He took the smaller automatic. After a moment's examination he racked the slide and thumbed off the safety. _Another skill I had no need for before the Stargate_, he thought.

"You'd like this, Colonel," Lara called down from somewhere near the ceiling. "In the corner, up high. Looks like a Spandau. Rigged for automatic fire." She worked her way around another of the pillars that buttressed the chamber roof. "I'm hoping there's a control panel near the door."

Jack merely grunted. "You expected that," Daniel said. "What else?"

"Wire and trenches don't stop troops," Jack said shortly. "They slow them down. You got to cover them."

"Cover? You mean, you need someone to watch them?"

"Yeah," Jack said. "Or…those'll do."

"Those" were grey shapes that were slinking out of the crack of the still-ajar steel door. Several of them. Lean shapes, with long fur, long muzzles, and eyes that glowed with more than reflected light.

"Wolves," Daniel said.

"_Nazi_ wolves," Jack had to qualify, a glint in his eye.

"Do wolves even have political affiliations?"

As they came out into the light, it was even more obvious how tattered they looked. Down to little more than sinew and patchy fur, enough skin rotted away from their fanged faces to turn them into skull-like visages.

"Jack…" Daniel said. "They're not even alive. How could they be moving? What the heck are these things?"

Jack didn't miss a beat. "Nazi _zombie_ wolves."

Behind them, a valve clicked open, and fire erupted from the walls. A huge wall of fire, advancing click by click with each fresh set of nozzles, forcing them into the kill zone.

* * *

Station Three, P3X-9998

* * *

"SG2 sent out a UAV during the first exploration," the burly geologist was explaining as he and Sam hiked down the multiple switch-backs of the crumbling path to the bottom of one of the secondary pits. "About ten kilometers from here there are three partial pyramids."

"Partial?" Sam asked.

"One appears to have crumbled. Theory is it may have been made of of dried clay and quicklime or some other substitute. The other two are quarried stone, but abandoned early in their construction. The ramps are still there."

_Why build pyramids here? _Sam wondered. There was so much they had yet to learn about how the Goa'uld did things. And why.

"We thought of you when we first picked up the energy readings…what?"

Sam had made a face. "I wish I'd never taught that phrase to the SG teams," she said. "Energy readings. Energy signatures. You might as well be saying you sensed a disturbance in the Force."

"Hey, no mixing genres." Bear laughed.

"And this from a remote sensing guy," Sam had to add.

Bear held up his hands in surrender. "You got me. And better than you know, too. When the first science team went in, they whipped out those little naquada detectors you and Felgar cooked up. That's how we knew this was a played-out mine."

"And then you made some real measurements," Sam said. The detectors were pretty primitive. Basically, they relied on a natural resonance naquada seemed to have with itself. It was a ranged effect, propagated at near light-speed, and Felgar had been trying to get people to call it "N-Rays." After his first suggestion had been shot down, of course. "J-rays," right.

"But then we brought out the real tools. EM interference, way up in the gigahertz range, but very low power and tough to trace. A couple other things that might reach two or three sigmas…but thermal imaging was the jackpot."

It was a truism that even Goa'uld technology hadn't managed to overcome. No transformation of energy was ever perfect. The house always took a cut of each deal, and it showed up as an increase in local entropy on the way to smoothing out to the eventual heat-death of the universe. Which is to say; as heat.

"So we found this thing they'd buried. In a short horizontal shaft. Cleverly covered up; I don't think the Goa'uld realized it was there. Annewe has a minor in paleobotany and says there were flowers brought in there."

"You mean…a shrine?" Sam grasped the implication quickly.

"Yeah." They'd reached the cut. Part of the cut had been freshly turned, the exposed material darker in color, and the hidden chamber opened up into the light. The interior surfaces were heavily dusted, even plastered, with a red-gold dust. "We didn't bring an anthropologist, but it sure looks like they'd been worshipping this thing in its hidden chamber for a lot of years. And when we got it out in the open, there were naquada traces all over."

Sam could see it now. A complicated blocky shape roughly two meters square, faceted surfaces framed in the ancient style, like a sculpture made from the lead-glass windows of an old church. It had an oddly representational aspect to it; something about the masses and planes made one think of a massive face, a Moa shape even.

Bear waved expansively. "Sam, meet Vaal," he said.

"_Now_ who's mixing genres?"

* * *

Houska Castle, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

The wolves weren't circling. They were smart enough to stay off the floor. Jack wished he could say the same, but the wall of flame was hot at their backs.

"Daniel…?" he said.

"It's simple," the archaeologist said. He seemed entirely split; fascinated by his latest discovery, and worried about the danger. "See, each tile has one or two Latin words on it. But I noticed two of the tiles, if you read them in order, spell out 'umbrae mortis…'"

"Daniel…!"

"Don't you get it?" Daniel would insist on being the teacher at times like this. "Shadow of death. And over here is 'etsi ambulavero.'" He paused in expectation. Blinked. "I walk."

"As soon as possible, Daniel!" Another click, and the heat was almost unbearable.

"Dangit, Jack, it's the 23rd Psalm! All we have to do is…" Daniel stepped on to one tile. It moved…no more than any other bit of old stone. The machine gun was still thankfully silent. Then Daniel jumped for, as far as Jack could tell, another entirely identical tile.

The archaeologist was muttering to himself now in some foreign language. Something about an ambulance on Etsy, under a media umbrella. Jack sighed, and jumped for the tile the archaeologist had just vacated.

In the meantime the lady archaeologist — archaeotrix — archaeologistrix — was climbing down as fast as she could. She dropped almost a body-length, caught herself by the fingertips in a bone-wrenching move that made Jack wince.

And right in the middle of the floor, Daniel hesitated. "Wait…'non timebo mala?' Is that right? I mean, it's obviously vulgate, but the Clementine, or the earlier one?"

"Daniel!" Jack demanded.

"What?" the archaeologist yelled back. "This isn't the KJV!"

"Daniel," Jack sighed. "I fear no evil, but that Spandau has me worried. Can you get a move on?"

"I see the panel!" Lara's voice cut across the floor. "The key! Doctor Rádsetoulal had it on him. You have to reach his body!"

"He's on 'homini," Daniel shouted back. "I don't know if I can reach!" He frowned. "_Non timebo mala_ it is, then." He hopped twice. "_Quoniam tu mecum es!_" he shouted, making two more leaps across to safe stones.

"Do you know the one that lets you fly?" Jack asked.

"I've got him! I mean I've got it! The key must have fallen from his hand…I can reach…got it!"

"Throw it over this way!" Lara called.

The wolves were pacing now. "Croft, that panel's at floor level. You can't jump down there without the wolves rushing you." Jack grimaced. "And if we open up on them now, they might panic right into the booby traps. And then we're all doing the Spandau ballet."

"And the moment you clear the floor, they'll be on you instead," Lara shook her head. There was something oddly personal about how she was taking this. Jack had a shrewd guess. He'd seen those emotions before.

"We can take care of ourselves," he told her. "Just be ready."

She frowned, then gave a short nod. "Okay. Throw me the key."

Jack couldn't resist. "Throw me the idol and I'll throw you the key."

Lara gave a yelp of pain. "Does _everyone…?!_" she said in exasperation. But her expression had cleared.

Daniel tossed. It wasn't the best toss. In fact, it missed.

Lara's muscles bunched…and she jumped! The woman leapt outwards, intercepting the bit of iron that flashed in the flickering electric lights, then tucked in her knees and somersaulted in mid-air. Her boots slammed into the wall opposite where she had been, and she shoved off in the same move. And landed, legs wide, one hand against the floor…but the other was holding the key.

Jack started running in a straight line. With a huge chattering in the enclosed space, the two— two! — vintage heavy machine guns came to life, hammering out bullets. They'd started in the corners, and shallow, but mechanisms were turning unheard in the clamor as they swept across and forward, chasing towards his team.

One thing at a time. He shot the lead wolf. Twice in the body. It didn't seem to slow down.

"Try head shots, Colonel!" Lara's pistols were out as well. Two of them, one in each hand. She engaged the wolf closest to her, firing in quick alternation.

"What, with this stapler?" Jack yelled back. And despite the infamously heavy action of the VP70, put his next two rounds right into a fanged skull.

That slowed it down. Jack felt rather than heard motion near him…his ears were already ringing from all the firing in an enclosed space…and Daniel popped up, hunched over his gun with both hands holding it down as he fired.

"Here!" Jack yelled. He tossed a fresh magazine at the archaeologist. Across the room, Lara Croft dropped two magazines out and with a whip-like motion picked up fresh ones simultaneously. "You've got to teach me that trick!" he said conversationally. He doubted anyone could hear him over the noise.

The machine-guns were getting far too close. Retreating to the door was impossible; the wolves seemed reluctant to let anything get between them and that inviting gap. But they could get closer to Lara.

One of the wolves finally gave up whatever ghost had been animating it. Another followed a moment later. That left two; one circling Lara quickly, only her gymnastic skill keeping it from getting behind her for the take-down bite they loved so much as she continued to hammer bullets into it.

_Sixteen,_ Jack's mind counted. _Seventeen. Eighteen. _The slide locked back. Daniel was backed up almost to where the lady archaeologist was fighting, and Jack was certain there wasn't time to reload.

"Okay, ugly," he said aloud. "Let's do this."

The wolf growled in an extremely eerie way. It was the giant of the pack, a shaggy monster of a beast standing nearly three feet tall at the withers. Whatever withers were.

Wolves weren't straight-up fighters; they preferred to chase. Jack deliberately took several steps back, close enough to the approaching fields of fire he could almost feel the displaced air coming off the hammering bullets.

The wolf leapt. Jack dropped, letting himself fall before the snapping muzzle could reach him. He dropped the VP70 as he fell and grabbed a double handful of ruff hair…and kicked. Before the wolf had its rear legs in position for an eviscerating blow Jack had brought his own up.

It landed in a confused heap of shaggy menace somewhere between "thou art with me" and "thy rod and thy staff," and had just enough time to clamber to its feet when the twin Spandaus awarded it an iron cross-fire of 7.92x57mm.

Jack was done in. All he could manage was to turn his head. He could easily see the chips of stone as the two machine guns converged on him. Distantly, he heard a pained animal yelp. Broken stone flashed by him, cutting his face. He closed his eyes.

And then there was silence.

"Security system is de-activated," Lara said. "Now let's see what Doctor Rádsetoulal found so interesting!"

* * *

"Vaal," Station Eight, P3X-9998

* * *

Sam's eyes lit up. "Do you know what this is?" she said.

"No," Bear said. "Otherwise we wouldn't have called you in."

The blond scientist was almost dancing. _Like a child at Christmas,_ Bear thought. "It's a clanking replicator," she said. "A Von Neumann. A Universal Assembler." She frowned, nose wrinkling. "Well, not universal. Otherwise that's a Grey Goo scenario. So it can't be a Neumann. Maybe call it a Harvard? Because the only thing it can't build is more of itself?"

"I don't get the reference," Bear admitted cheerfully.

"Harvard architecture in computers. The difference from Von Neumann architecture is that a Harvard machine has separate buses and registers for program memory versus data memory."

"I meant, any of the references."

"It's a cornucopia, Doctor Doyle. That's why they venerated it. Bring it raw materials, and it spits out, well…whatever they needed. Doctor, this is huge! It's the insight to Goa'uld technology we've been searching for!"

"So, wait…you are saying we were right in calling it Vaal? That all they had to do is put rocks in one end? No sluicing, no refining…that's why we don't see anything other than the basic technology to dig and transport raw ore?"

"Exactly," Sam said. "It digested all that meteoric iron you were hoping to see. And then took whatever it needed from the rest of the soil. Molecular assembly — right down to atomic carbon, nitrogen, oxygen…"

"And what was the power source….oh, right. Sorry, this bear is a little slow some times."

"Naquadah." Sam nodded. "Which mean…this red dust here…I'm willing to make a pretty large bet if you did an assay you'd see depleted naquadah."

"Depleted…?"

Sam shrugged. "What else do you call it? Naquada has a number of allotropes, but it also has nuclear isomers. That's key to the incredible power you can unlock in the stuff. Stable nuclear isomers. Amazing stuff — chemistry meets high-energy physics, and on a molecular basis as well! The nucleus is so huge, molecular interaction at the valence shell can actually influence the stability of the bound neutrons."

"Okay, I'm totally guessing here, but say the Goa'uld were here mining the naquada. They set up machines like this to turn the stuff into staff weapons and whatever. When the naquada ran out, they moved on. But they didn't realize the slaves they abandoned on this empty planet had hidden one of these, err, mechanical Santas."

Sam's eyes got distant. "Daniel should see this. A whole religion based on feeding the machine, which in turn gave them what they needed to survive. Doctor, it made a better god for them than the Goa'uld."

"Probably closer, too. Most of what they'd see of the other would be the Jaffa guards. So where is Daniel right now?"

"Oh, he and Jack went to Prague. Something that Croft character wanted to look up there."

"I hope you told them to stay away from any windows."

"Windows?" Sam said. Then she got it. "Oh…you! You're horrible!"

Bear laughed. "Wait till…"

The radio he carried interrupted them.

"This is Sergeant Garcia!" the voice crackled through interference and background noise of…shooting? "Hostiles have come through the gate! Colonel Singh is down! Taking heavy fire! We can't hold the gate!"

"This is Major Carter." Sam had taken the radio from him before he even realized she was moving. Her voice, her entire posture had changed in an instant. She wasn't the scientist in the middle of a discovery now; she was suddenly and thoroughly military. "Fall back to Station Eight. Maintain radio silence and do not let hostiles track you."

"But the…"

The Major's eyes hardened. "Leave the gate. That's a direct order." She turned off the radio, then turned to Bear. "We need to gather the rest of your team here. How many can we reach without using the radio?"

"All, I think." Bear dragged an arm across his eyes. "This planet was cleared. There's nothing hostile here."

"Someone else arrived," Major Carter said.

* * *

Special Collection, Houska Castle, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

It was a strange cross between a chemical laboratory and a mausoleum. A round room, the dome painted with constellations and the tracks of planets and ringed with astrological symbols, with similar markings echoed on the stone floor. Niches in a regular pattern around the walls, holding cabinets and open shelving to taste, within which was an eclectic collection of bottled reagents, stuffed and pickled biological material, mouldering manuscripts, clockwork contraptions and obscure early scientific instruments.

In the center was a wide pillbox of a plinth crested by a monstrously peculiar figure. It had three faces under a tall conical hat and held a staff tipped with an Armillary Sphere. It was their old friend Hermes Trismegistus, of course, as eclectic as this depiction was. Around the plinth was an inscription in both Greek and Latin. "That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to perform the miracles of one only thing," Jana translated without difficulty.

The curator of the Special Collection had met them after they had deactivated the Ahnenerbe security system, and they had entered the newly-opened room together. It was not obvious how Doctor Rádsetoulal had done it. Hopefully he had left notes before rashly deciding to go in himself.

Nor had he been the first since Emperor Rudolph's time. Much of the older material had been rudely wedged into corners and gray utilitarian file cabinets installed in the place of honor instead. Whatever experimental table John Dee or Edward Kelley might have used had been replaced with a large, no-nonsense Army issue…and some fairly sophisticated instruments sat atop it.

There were modern animal cages with steel mesh as well, and Lara tried very hard not to notice if there was motion within the sad contents of those cages. Wolves would not have been the only animal trials the Ahnenerbe had attempted.

Whatever they had been working on had been cleared out in haste. The most obvious point of exploration for an explanation would be the small stack of manuscripts left on the table, along with an untidy notebook in crabbed German.

There were several quires of old vellum, a little smaller in size than a coffee-table book, with spidery writing and meticulous little diagrams in dark brown iron-gall ink.

"Wait," Daniel said in a hushed voice. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Only if you think it is the lost books of the Voynich Manuscript," Lara grinned.

"But this other book…how odd," Daniel said. "It appears to be in Renaissance Italian, but of an obscure dialect. I'd have to guess a self-taught man, probably Venetian." He flipped to a front page. "Memoirs of a Soldier," he translated. "Captain Giacomo Gagliardi. He'd be a sixteenth-century _condottiero._ That is, a mercenary."

The Colonel seemed to pick up on Lara's lack of expression. He remarked, not exactly towards her, "I know about the condottieri," he said. "Smart guys. Some of the first in the western world to really approach war as a business instead of getting all caught up in charging the guns because honor."

"And smart enough to trade sides to whoever was winning," Lara said, equally without rancor.

"Well, there's old soldiers, and there's bold soldiers. But there's no…"

"People." Jana interrupted. "Doctor Jackson, you were saying?"

"Actually," Daniel couldn't resist the snark, "I seem to recall that period sources referred to them as _capitani di ventura._ Literally…venture capitalists."

Lara snorted at this. "Back to the manuscript. Why did the Ahnenerbe care?"

Daniel turned back to where the German researcher had been reading. "This section here, he's titled 'The affair of the worm of Mary-town.'"

"Worm, eh?" Lara said. "There's a lot of old stories like that. The lindworm in German and Norse myths. The Lambton Worm, which terrorized several villages in North East England. All the way out to your basic Saint George."

"I'm not sure where this is happening," Daniel complained. "I'm not good with old place names and the idiosyncratic spelling doesn't help."

"What kind of names can you make out?"

"Well…he says here that the Grand Master had fallen in battle, but Venice had advanced some monies towards possible relief of the Knights. Mentions Wenceslaus, specifically."

"Good King Wenceslaus? Is this a Christmas story then?"

"No, he was much earlier," Jana said. "This would be Wenceslaus of Bohemia. II. Or III. I have trouble keeping track of them all."

"He says 'the Poles' had pressed the Knights hard, and then mentions a 'Grand Duke Vytautas' — that's my best guess for how to pronounce it — leading more of the opposing host. He apparently didn't have much hope of arriving in time to relieve anyone." Daniel flipped back to a page he'd looked at before. "There's a whole bit here where he mourns the passing of a great soldier, cut down from his saddle by…that's odd."

"What's odd, Daniel?"

"If I am translating this correctly, 'by the flame from a lance.' Yes, it says flame. And lance. And in the next passage, 'some had even said it was like unto that weapon both bless'd and curs'd which the old Roman had once employed, thus hastening the moment of Resurrection and perhaps, in G*ds own time, the relief of us all."

"Wait…he compared a weapon used in that battle to the Spear of Destiny?" Lara shook her head. "Oh, why not. It isn't like there aren't a dozen of the things wandering around already."

Daniel looked closer. "Got it," he said. "I thought this was part of a name, but he's just comparing the great general to a lion 'brought down as if were the king by nets and jeers' — I think he's making an allusion to the Roman Coliseum now. Anyhow, the name is Ulrich von Jungingen — _Gran Maestro dell'Ordine Teutonico_, as it says here."

"The Teutonic Knights," Jack was nodding. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"Battle of Gruenwald," Jana said. "So I'm willing to bet the story the Ahnenerbe were interested in takes place somewhere near the Siege of Marienburg. Hey," she shrugged, seeing their expressions. "The Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War is a big part of the history of this part of the world. Shaped Poland, Bohemia…and our nation, too. And the Nazi's were way into that little clip-clop, too. They saw it as the betrayal of the legitimate teutonic-slash-Holy Roman rulers of this part of the world, and used it as part of their general attitude of hatred towards the Polish people."

"Oh. Oho," Daniel said. He'd been continuing to read as the others digressed. "Here…I'm going to try to paraphrase this as I go." He cleared his throat.

_Many companies have done better for themselves. Not a few ended up with large estates near Venice, or Dukedoms in diverse parts of the Christian world. But I would dare to say few have fought further from home, and with stranger foes, than the twice-dozen strong of Captain "Jack" Gagliardi. _

_And so it was with the worm of Marienburg. We were moving North as quickly as we could, good Venetian money in our pockets (much of it spent already, alas) to relieve what few of the doughty Teutonic Knights were tucked away quite comfortably in that remote castle. The mixed Polish and Lithuanian armies had ravaged the countryside in the process of taking back whatever they could from the Teutons, and other foreign captains were on the hunt for forage in what remained._

_It is the nature of warfare to be easy on the rulers, easier still on the mercenaries (at least those who remain nimble and keep their wits about them), and hardest on the people. For it is their lands that become the battlefields, their crops that become the army's larder, their taxes that go to keep the knights in their fancy armors, their sons that are pressed into bearing spears._

_From the dark rich earth of France to this forsaken end of civilization, and out across those lands where Spanish knights fight Moorish ones or Constantinople falls at last before the Ottoman cannon, our time seems naught but scorched earth and ruined fields, smashed houses, crying mothers, the burning ruins of farms and lives._

_As an Englishman once told me in happier times, "life's a rum go."_

_It was in this melancholy state that our band was approached by a timorous villager from one of the tiny places with unpronounceable names we moved through. Oskar did his best, and with some struggle, the wisp's meaning became clear._

_When forage was mean, it was the way to take all and leave the villagers to starve. When forage was good, though, and movement of the army slow, a captain might chose to set up for a while, finding the best house (and the best of whatever else should strike his eye) for himself and similarly disporting his band for a time._

_Such was happening here. And I recognized the name. Andrescu, the Butcher of Oleśnica. An old man who moved like a young man, and seemed to take endless childish joy in the degradation and defilement of others. Some said he had once been a Hungarian King, one of particularly savage reputation. He travelled with a band of equally savage persons…among them, one who may have personally struck the blow that sent the Grand Master off his horse._

_A Captain's goal is to feed his men, keep them safe (as far as was compatible with our mode of employment) and earn money. But as I looked into the near-witless eyes of the starving, shivering remnant that had approached us, I decided that, once again, there were other reasons to fight. My band agreed with me, particularly young Jacobi, a mere lad who we had found wandering the ruins of a village somewhere between the good lands of Provence and this strange chilly land and who had remained attached as cook's assistant and runner and general trainee; eager to fight despite his youth, filled with a heart and and intelligence that would suit for a dozen men._

_Of all the creeds of a mercenary, practicality rules above all. Thus we urged our employer to see that the occupiers were well-plied with drink, and we ourselves waited until the hour was late. And the fighting commenced. I will not bore you with the details, as it echoed many I have chronicled in these pages before. Suffice to say the old ploy worked as well as it did for Wily Odysseus, and many of our foe went reporting to their Maker with no impression of how they had been dispatched. One sleep passed into another: in at least one rude hut, the little death passed to the larger death, with much disconcertion to all involved._

_The alarum was raised ere long, and the fighting became more interesting. But our numbers were already superior, and our armor was on our bodies. We caught the Butcher upstairs in the grandest of homes in this village, a full two stories in height. His remaining guards fought like the possessed: a term I do not apply fancifully, as the continuation of my narrative will show._

_At one juncture did he cry out for aid from the greatest of his brutes. In reply Bartolomeo did show him that creature's staff, taken from him as he lay in a pool of his own black blood. Indeed, yes: the very same staff and the very same man that had struck the fatal blow I told of earlier._

_The Butcher's eyes lit like tiny lamps at the sight. Hell-fire was visible from within, and his voice became that of a demon. "How dare you rabble raise arms against your master!" he cried, and all within reach of his voice felt an unaccustomed weakness._

"Did you just read what I thought you read?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Daniel said. "And it gets even better."

_Fortunate for all of us, Francesco feared nothing in hell, nor in heaven either. Only his dear mother in Padua had the power to frighten him; so large did she loom in his thoughts, no lesser fear might apply. As the demon attempted to capture the rest of my little band with his eyes, Francesco leaned in. His Dane-axe flicked across as if a mere poignard, but it took the monster's spine with it._

_I brought up my own blade, and it was good for little Jacobi that I had done so. For even as the Butcher crumpled, something moved. A horrible grey wurm it was, with a long triangular mouth and frills it unfurled as it moved. It moved so quickly in the murk of the room that I believe I was the only one to see it. And it moved so quickly I am sure that only my hand knew it in time to save the boy. Either that, or my sword was guided by a Providence that had chosen this moment, out of so many opportunities in this vale of sorrow, to intervene._

_The wurm leapt for the bare neck of the boy, and my sword met it there. In the very instant it broke skin it was itself broke. It fell, then, in two squirming pieces, and we were happy indeed to see it go. _

_Of the Butcher's body, it gave us no further trouble. And though it would be many months in collecting, our little band did finally earn Teutonic silver for their business done that night._

"Jack, that explains it!"

"Explains what?"

"The Voynich. Look…a little later on — our German friend marked the pages for us — the Captain tells of how the boy slowly recovered strength from his ordeal, but the 'strange sights of places unknown to man toyed at his thoughts' and they eventually sent him into the priesthood to recover his sanity. Jack, the Goa'uld didn't get the boy. It died at the moment of implantation. But it left the boy with fragments of the racial memory!"

"So he, what? Writes a book?"

"Yep." Daniel almost beamed. "The best way he knew how. He knew a language no other man on Earth could speak. He had to devise a script the best he could to write it down — based on the Latin the church would teach him, and his native Italian. And the memories were incomplete, jumbled. That's why he put the wrong parts of different plants together…but could still depict a plant from Chulak well enough so Teal'c could recognize it!"

"And, yeah, okay." Lara Croft stood up. She was angry, and the controlled strength in how she stood was openly intimidating. They'd seen how she'd dealt with the wolves, and Daniel at least was pretty sure she could kick his ass even more easily. "It's time," she said. "To make with the explanations."

"Jack." Daniel said the single word.

"For crying out loud. Okay, here it is. We've got a Stargate. We found it under a rock in Egypt. It lets us go to other worlds. And we found something there."

Jack got up, slowly, and even though he didn't draw himself up in the slightest his body language still made it quite clear he wasn't going to be intimidated. "We found the Goa'uld. They're a race of alien parasites. Crawls into your head and takes you over. They've been ruling half this galaxy, using their technology to pass themselves off as gods. They even tried that trick down here, back around 3,000 BC. The Egyptians of that time got sick of them and threw their asses out. Now we're going to do the same thing to the rest of that sorry bunch."

For once, the Tomb Raider had no reply.

* * *

The Stargate, P3X-9998

* * *

Major Carter was lying across the top of the ridge looking down on the Stargate. Fortunately the standard field pack included a powerful monocular. Sergeants Patterson and Garcia were with her. She was the ranking officer now, but she had to see the situation for herself.

Eight Jaffa were visible, guarding the gate. Four more were close on a lone Goa'uld. All looked battle-weary; several had obvious bandages. And those bandages were not new. _They fought their way here,_ Carter thought. _This is one desperate Goa'uld. Maybe they hoped to find there was still naquada here so they could rebuild?_

The Goa'uld was in armor but bare-headed. Her hair was cropped military-short, closer than Carter's. She held a staff weapon like her guards. Her guards. Carter could not help but notice they weren't deployed in the ordinary way. Instead of standing like statues, they had found cover around the gate.

_A desperate Goa'uld, _Carter thought, _and a smart one. I think we've got a problem here._


	14. Chapter 13: Chelm Stories

I make no claims to ownership of the _Stargate_ or _Tomb Raider_ universes, nor any of the material within them. Nor — although the latter fall within fair use — do I make such claims towards characters, situations, or dialogue created by Dorothy L. Sayers, H.G. Wells, J.M. Barrie, Max Ehrlich (via Gene Roddenbury), Steven Spielberg, Anne McCaffrey, Russel T. Davies, P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Stross, H.P. Lovecraft, Jack "King" Kirby, Jane Espension, James Tiptree, Tim Powers, Robert Heinlein, John Lennon (by way of Rob Baker), J.K. Rowling, George Lucas, Herb Caen, Tristan Jones, Ayn Rand (sorry!), George Bernard Shaw, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bart Sibrel (by way of Buzz Aldrin's right hook), Zahi Hawass (some of his dialog is directly cribbed)…oh, yeah, and P. L. Travers, by way of Robert and Richard Sherman.

We're almost done with emperors and alchemists; pretty soon I can wrap up some plot threads, stop info-dumping about 17th-century Europe, and stop feeling like Jack (and Sam, for that matter) are being Aquaman in an episode of the Super-Friends. At least this time I finally came up with some fish for him to talk to.

* * *

Hrad Houska, Greater Prague, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

It was cold as a tomb in the stony alchemist's chamber dug deep into the rock below the gothic walls of Castle Houska. Of course it was. That was basic geo-thermodynamics. Large masses of stone acted as a thermal sink. Insulated from the direct heat of the sun or other short-lived fluctuations in outside temperature, a cave tended towards the average; warmer than the outside during winter, cooler during summer. The large heat capacity of that same thermal mass also allowed it to conduct heat away from warmer objects — such as its visitors.

Lara rarely noticed cold as such. She'd taught herself long ago not to react to cold, not to let it shake her concentration or push her into rash action. She could rest in new-fallen snow as still as an apex predator (or a sniper); and often enough for similar goals. She'd learned that harsh self-control a long, long time ago.

Their private plane had suffered an engine failure while crossing the Himalayan range in Nepal. The pilots had died in the crash. Her mother had vanished from the ruined temple they crawled into for shelter, and Lara was left alone, faced with the ten-day hike to Kathmandu without supplies or gear.

She had been nine years old.

Moments before the crash, Amelia Croft had told her child she would never have to be cold if she didn't want to be. And from that day on, Lara wasn't. She'd come out of the mountains with a self-sufficiency that let her survive emotionally when her father was away on increasingly marathon expeditions to track down the secrets of his wife's disappearance. Not that it didn't hurt to not have him there while she was growing up. Not that it didn't hurt when he, too, vanished into the mysteries of the past, leaving her alone in the world at fifteen.

Daniel Jackson didn't seem to be noticing the cold, either. He was nose deep in the mouldering manuscripts, completely unaware of the shivers and yawns that came over him at intervals. Which was something else that Lara was unfamiliar with. Her expeditions tended to be rather more, well, expeditious. A lot of running and jumping, really. With only brief pauses to read an inscription here and there. Her experience of archaeology rarely approached the mainstream of months of studying a single artifact. Much less the classic pioneers, pre-photography, who might spend days making meticulous drawings by the light of a candle before retreating to the surface.

Probably another reason she never felt the cold. She was just too _active_.

"Bored now," Jack O'Neill announced. Again. "Really bored. Bored bored bored. Can we wrap this up and call it a night, people? Now?!"

That had been quite an interesting bombshell the Colonel had dropped on her earlier, Lara reflected. "Mental parasites?" had been her first reaction.

"Wait, that's your first question?" the Colonel had replied. "About the symbiotes, not about Stargates or Egyptian gods?"

Lara had made a brief "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" gesture. And they'd had to leave it at that, because Doctor Rubešova had returned then and as much as the Colonel was willing to let Lara into the club — Official Secrets Act and the good word from the PM no doubt figuring in his calculations — he wasn't willing to divulge to everyone.

And the Colonel had a point now, too.

"Why is this still here?" Jana asked before Lara could speak.

"Eh?" Daniel was too distracted by his reading to be paying attention.

"Why didn't they box it all up and send it to Berlin?"

"In 1944?" Jack drawled. "Healthier to stay far away from Der Fuhrer. Better to be chasing after secret weapons in Mexico or something than to be where you might get sent to the Eastern Front."

"Or shot," Jana agreed.

"Still doesn't explain why they worked here, so far underground," Lara argued. "Obviously they didn't find what they were looking for. Because otherwise we'd have stories of zombie battalions. I mean, _more_ stories of zombie battalions."

"Okay, this one is stumping me." Daniel Jackson had only barely paid attention to their discussion, and was still struggling with one of the various texts the German researchers had been working on. "It's not Western Aramaic like I first thought. There are niqqud, but it doesn't seem to be proper Hebrew either. It almost seems to be using the letters as an alphabet. Best I can make out is the title of this section is stories about a town called 'Chelm.'"

Jana started laughing. "Doctor Jackson, that's not Hebraic — that's _Yiddish_! Chelm stories are a sort of Borscht Belt humor."

"Oh!" Daniel said. "I don't know why I didn't realize it."

"I think one of those German researchers might have had a sense of humor," Lara said.

"I think one of those 'Germans' might have had a little something to hide," Jana added.

"Right place for it, though," Lara said. "I mean, if you are going to be exploring alchemists and mystics of the time of Emperor Rudolph II, you can hardly leave out Judah Loew ben Bezalel."

"Oh, god," Jana sighed. "I knew that was going to come up eventually. Can't anyone do archaeology in Prague without bringing up the Golem?"

"Gollum?" Jack's ears perked up. "You mean like, 'My Preciousss?'"

"No, Golem," Jana correct patiently.

"That's what I said."

"Think Jewish mythology, not hobbits," Lara tried to help.

"My precious, oy vey?" Jack made a face. "Nope, not seeing it."

"Jack, the golem is a clay man brought to life by magic," Daniel entered the discussion.

"The most famous stories have him created in Prague, by Rabbi Loew," Jana said. "Although those are probably 19th-century literary inventions. Oddly enough, there's an earlier golem story which is set in…Chelm."

"Well, the High Rabbi of Prague did meet with Emperor Rudolph," Lara said. "Although the stories may make more of it than there was, the Emperor was probably impressed by his learning and intrigued by his knowledge of the Kabbala."

"And what does this High Rabbi have to do with the other guy?" Jack asked.

"Which other guy?"

"The guy that made the golem."

"That was Rabbi Loew."

"So who was the High Rabbi?"

"Rabbi Loew."

"Not asking about him."

"Jack!" Daniel cut across the Who's On First routine. "Anyway, he's a historical figure, and stories say he made this man out of clay and set him to defend the Jews of Prague against pogrom."

"A man made out of clay. Doesn't seem too effective."

"Shame!" Jana waved her finger. "And I thought you were an Air Force officer."

"What's that have to do with…?"

Lara grinned. "Colonel, why do you think archaeologists spend so much time collecting potsherds?"

"I dunno," Jack answered. "I guess I thought it was because you," he looked back and forth from Daniel to Lara, "had a really low threshold of boredom."

Lara laughed aloud at this. "Good one. No; it's because clay is practically indestructible. Iron rusts away to a smear, parchments and skins rot, but clay survives the ages. And what Jana was getting at, was that clay — which your Air Force engineers tend to call 'ceramics' — is the high-strength, high-temperature secret weapon in jet engines and Space Shuttles."

"I shouldn't be ashamed of our golem," Jana added, shaking her head ruefully. "It's the prototypical robot. Used as a teaching example in cybernetics classes. See, one of the legends of the golem is that it follows orders to the letter. Tell it to fetch a bucket from the well and it will keep filling buckets until the whole village is flooded."

"Like Mickey in that movie," Jack smiled, obviously remembering a certain anthropomorphic rodent in a tall magician's hat. "I get it. So keep it away from brooms."

* * *

They extended their search then, almost physically pulling Daniel up from the magnetic attraction of the first stack of manuscripts that had caught his eye. The first thing of note Lara had found was that under the grime the floor was incised in more astronomical symbols. "Kepler was also a guest of the Emperor," Jana said at this. "I have a feeling Rudolph II may have pressed all of his experts into designing tricks for whatever his ultimate secret was."

The next discovery was Jana's. A painting, this was, styled vaguely after an old work Lara remembered from some gallery of Christ healing a leper. The symbolism on this one was quite obscure. "The figure on the horse is the Emperor," she observed. "The reclining figure…there's something oddly Arthurian about him."

"I think that may be the Fisher King," Jana said. "Part of the Grail legends and stories that were built up over the ages from Chrétien de Troyes through Eschenbach through to, well, Richard Wagner have the idea that the Holy Lance can heal wounds. And that it was used to postpone the death of the Wounded King."

"Yes, I noticed the leaf shape in that weapon the Emperor is holding. Longinus again."

"That's a funny-looking lance," Jack commented. "Almost reminds me of…ah, never mind."

"Well, I see something else," Lara said then. "Look at his left hand."

"Isn't that…well, it looks a little bit like that Horus Jar you were looking for," Daniel said.

"Then Rudolph _did_ have it," Lara pronounced with satisfaction.

The last discovery was made by Jack. It happened suddenly, in a flurry of motion, musty feathers, and a cry a little like a goose with laryngitis. "I just touched the cage and it jumped out at me!" Jack said.

Lara saw the creature run with surprising speed and agility towards the center of the room. It was a scrawny, grey-plumaged bird the size of a large turkey, with a a distinctive and comical down-turned beak. Jack dodged out of the way as the bird veered around the table then shot straight for the plinth. "Keep that thing away from me!" he said. "I don't want to be known as a man who shot a dodo!"

"Nobody is shooting my dodo!" Jana retorted.

"Your dodo?"

"I am the curator of Emperor Rudolph's collection," Jana said, "and that makes it my dodo."

"You can keep it," Jack said. The dodo, ignoring this interplay, hopped up on the table, then a cabinet, then ducked into a protected niche between the legs of the three-headed Hermes Trismegistus statue. There it stayed, watching them with rolling eyes.

"Well, it took three hundred and forty years, but one of them finally learned to be wary of humans," Lara observed dryly.

"Why was it hiding earlier?" Daniel wondered.

"I'm willing to bet it also learned to be wary of wolves," Lara said with grim humor. "Those zombie wolves were probably shut up in here from the moment the SS dynamited the tunnel until Professor Rádsetoulal figured out how to open the door again."

"So what kept it alive? What kept _them_ alive?" Jana wondered.

"Maybe we should ask _her,_" Lara said. The dodo, still cowering from the human presence in the room, was pressed up against the stone of the tall central plinth. "Want to bet there's something inside there?"

* * *

Gate Control Room, SGC, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

General Hammond came up the short flight of winding steel stairs to the Gate Control Room. The shutters were open, giving a good view of the rectangular concrete Embarkation Room and the dark stone ring that dominated it. The Stargate glistened in the work lights, quiescent now but giving an impression of suppressed power nonetheless.

This was Hammond's favorite place to be in his command. It was also one of his least favorite moments. Tech Sergeant Harriman, the Duty Officer, acknowledged him without standing from his post. "SG11 is now an hour late on their scheduled call-in," he reported.

"Thank you," Hammond said. "That's Colonel Singh's team. He is meticulous about such things." Hammond hated this. It was part of an officer's duty to send people into danger. An officer had to accept that some of them wouldn't be coming back. But it didn't make it any easier knowing that some of his people were in trouble.

He looked out over the Embarkation Room and the looming alien artifact that had made this entire facility happen. It only made it worse that his people were literally on another planet. You couldn't get much further from help than that.

"Prep the UAV," he instructed his Duty Officer. "If there's been no contact by twelve hundred hours we'll attempt it from this end."

"Sir…" Walter paused before continuing. "Major Carter joined them last night."

"I know," Hammond said. He didn't play personal favorites, but the young officer was one of the most essential people in his command. She'd been part of the team that got the Stargate working in the first place. Her mind and her skills were almost literally irreplaceable.

He sighed shortly. "Pass the word on to Ferreti and Makepeace. We may need them to prep their teams for a rescue mission."

* * *

The Hermes Chamber, Hrad Houska, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

"What you said before," Lara suddenly swung on Jana Rubešova. "Rudolph II was far too fond of gadgets and magic tricks. And he certainly had the talent around him to commission a few. Edward Kelly. Rabbi Loew was known for a few miracles here and there, at least in the Prague Stories."

"Natural philosophers and botanists like Charles de l'Ecluse," Jana nodded, "leading scientific instrument makers like Habermel and Schissle. And of course poets and painters like Elizabeth Jane Westen or Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who could hide anything under layers and layers of clever symbolism."

"So of course there's something hidden in this room," Lara said. She and Jana turned back towards the central plinth, the dome painted in elaborate astrological symbology, all lions and waterfalls, spread like a canopy over the statue of the great alchemist himself. "As above, so below," she paraphrased the inscription, "to perform the miracles of…"

"Tycho Brahe," Jana said over her. "Rudolph's Royal Astronomer."

"That's it, isn't it," Lara said. "We need to clear this floor."

With the floor clear the astronomical symbols were clear. "As above, so below," Lara repeated. "But they don't match. The astronomical paintings on the ceiling are different."

"What about that orrery we passed on the way in?" Jack asked diffidently.

"That's the trick." Lara was certain. "We just need to put the planets in the right order. Pity we didn't bring an astronomer."

"I've got it," Jack said.

"Oh?"

"Don't let him fool you," Daniel said. "He's actually a lot smarter than he lets on."

They retreated past the steel doors the unfortunate Professor Rádsetoulal had opened, and across the parquet under the now-disarmed machine guns to the tall-ceilinged gallery where the orrery was hung. And there they found the first problem.

"The handles are missing," Lara sighed. There was an intricate spidery clockwork mechanism tucked into a corner, with cables and rods leading up towards the giant orrery. Lara reflected that this was altogether all too familiar. She wasn't looking forward to exploring each and every gallery off the main passage, rooting through boxes and defusing remaining traps to collect every last control handle.

"Hold on," the Colonel held up a hand. He retreated towards one of the piles of crates the German researchers had left behind, and returned swinging a long crowbar in one hand. "Noticed it earlier," he said. "Just the thing for opening a way. And dealing with close encounters."

"Now all he needs is a beard and a doctorate," Jana said _sotto voce._

"Um…" Daniel started. He seemed to be waking up to something. "Are you…are you seriously going to use _that_ on an irreplaceable 16th-century artifact?"

"That was the plan, yes," Lara said blandly.

"Is that what you go around doing? Breaking ancient mechanisms just so you can get at what's inside? We shouldn't be trying to operate any of this thing!" His voice was rising. "These are historical treasures and you want to just start them up like they were an old Volkswagen you found in a cave!"

"Because what we are looking for is important, Daniel," Lara said sharply.

"More important than history?"

"Oh, you are one to talk! You haven't published any of your findings since 1992. You keep the Stargate hidden so deep underground it might as well still be buried under the sands outside Giza. And don't tell me you haven't done just the same to get at some of those alien artifacts I've seen your people waving about!"

"But thats..that's different!" Daniel was turning red, so angry and flustered he couldn't form words properly anymore. "Lives are at stake!"

"Oh, like I've never had similar challenges. I've fought things that you wouldn't believe."

"Oh, what, you saw a Bigfoot once or something? We are trying to stop the Goa'uld from invading Earth!"

"Which is why it is worth pulling a few old levers even if they break from the rust!"

"You! You! You are nothing but a….but a grave robber!"

"Idealist!" Lara spat, dismissively.

"Grave robber!" Daniel had his insult now, and was going to stick with it.

"Academic!"

"THAT'S ENOUGH!"

They both turned, shocked into silence at O'Neill's command voice. "Daniel, go to your happy place," O'Neill said, mildly. "Lara, stop hitting your brother or I'm going to turn the car around right now."

Jana couldn't help it. She started laughing, doubled over with it as she looked from Daniel's face to Lara's.

"She's right and you know it, Daniel," Jack continued in the same mild tone. "If it was important enough to our command to go out here in the first place, it's important enough to risk damaging a few museum pieces on the way." He turned, then. "And Lara? Go easy on Daniel." His voice dropped lower, to a mere murmur. "They have his wife."

"They…?" Lara stopped herself in the middle of her question. Her lips silently formed the words, "the Goa'uld?" and Colonel O'Neill nodded.

Daniel seemed to recognize what the Colonel had just communicated to her. He set his lips in a way that refused to hear any apology from her…but also gave grudging apology for his own outbreak.

Lara went to his side anyhow. "Daniel," she said, placing a hand on his arm. "We _will_ stop them."

She didn't realize, until after he gave a choppy, answering nod, that she had said "we."

* * *

_In those days, the Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Bohemia, resided in Prague Castle surrounded by courtiers and scholars, astronomers and alchemists — the latter of whom sought ceaselessly for the Philosopher's Stone, the source of all life, the center of all inanimate and animate, that could change lead to gold or make a man into an immortal._

_In those days also, High Rabbi Loew was the head rabbi of Prague, the teacher and spiritual leader of his people. He was a wise and great man, learned in the Torah and in the ways of man._

_In those days also were often raised dark suspicions of the Jews. Should a Gentile die within the walls of Prague, someone would make sure the body was found within the Jewish Quarter. Then the rumor of Blood Libel would rise again. So did the Jews of Prague live in fear that the killings might begin anew, and so did they plea with their High Rabbi to go to the Emperor to plea on their behalf._

_The High Rabbi left early in the morning, on foot and accompanied only by his son-in-law. As he passed the Old-New Synagogue, however, he found some of his people had already gathered with questions. "Will you tell the Emperor there is no truth to the libel?" they asked him. "Will there finally be peace for us?"_

_The High Rabbi paused before answering. "I will tell the Emperor only the truth," he said. "And as for peace — it is for no man to know the future, but I will do all I can to improve the present."_

_The people had to be satisfied with that, and the High Rabbi continued on his way. But inside he was wrought with worry. The Emperor was a polite and willing listener, but he was also a superstitious man. He had much enjoyed the little miracles the High Rabbi had performed from time to time, but each "miracle" made greater his superstitious fear that strange powers were held by the Jews._

_The miracle he contemplated now beset him with worry both secular and spiritual. On the one hand, it might frighten the Emperor so much he might close the town of Prague to the Jews, removing them from the home they had known for many hundreds of years._

_On the other hand, it was the deepest and most serious undertaking of his career. It was a secret known to only the most learned. The High Rabbi knew too well the story of the four sages who entered the Garden of Eden. Only one came away with his life and his sanity. What Akiba had learned to do, the High Rabbi now completed doing._

_He would breathe life into dead clay. And all of his learning could not foretell what might follow._

* * *

The crowbar Jack had found could only do so much. Several of the linkages were already gone, or broke away the moment they applied pressure to them. Lara was able to apply body weight to one chain, dragging the attached mechanism around in a groaning of metal and a brief snow of rust.

"That's it," she said, dropping to the floor again. "Moon is in the Seventh House."

Jack checked his notes again. He was actually a decent observational astronomer, with a basic grounding in astrophysics, but astrology had always struck him as useless nonsense. It took all his learning to translate the archaic symbology into useful working terms. "Planets are still off," he said. "Got it. Jupiter…that's the old guy with the crown and the bird, right? And that backwards four thing. Anyhow…you have to align that with Mars."

Mars was easy. It was red, of course. And the symbol was the male of the old male/female thing. And if you got into paintings (which too many of the clues had) it was the God of War in full armor. Two out of three things that made it a very agreeable planet to Jack.

"This will be fun," the Tomb Raider said. And she leapt at the wall again in a way that was starting to get familiar to Jack. It was certainly a different approach to exploration, he mused. Given the right kind of terrain, she could move remarkably fast. He had a feeling more than one of her various enemies had been surprised by where she showed up.

And those were some very tight…um…shorts… Jack made himself look away. He saw the Czech professor was looking up as well, with her jaw nearly on the floor. She hadn't been around earlier for Lara's first gymnastic exploits. Beside him, Daniel was also trying to catch his breath. "I need to get out more," the archaeologist muttered.

"Down, boy," Jack grinned.

"The last time I could climb like that," Jana said in awe, "was when I was twelve. How does she even stay balanced?"

"Okay, people," Jack said firmly. "Let's stay focused." He waited until he had their attention again. "You remember what happened last time someone opened a door," he told them.

Lara had made it to the long arm that held the largest planet in the orrery. It still sagged a little under her weight. Now she was swinging back and forth, kicking out on each swing to push it in the desired direction on hop at a time. The four tiny Galilean Satellites bounced at the end of their own little arms with each hop.

Hrm. Hadn't Galileo just gotten a telescope at that point? Jack was pretty hazy on the Renaissance, but if his instinct was right this sculpture had to date from very close to the end of Rudolph's reign.

There was a "click" easily audible from the floor when the last planet slid into place. And none of them were prepared for what happened next. The whole orrery jarred into motion. Clouds of rust and stone dust cascaded down as the planets went into their own small echo of the stately dance far above. Jack could even see two tiny fragments whirling at high speed in their orbits around Mars.

"Now someone is just messing with us," he muttered. "Hang on, Lara!" he called up.

"That was the general idea, Colonel!" the Tomb Raider called back down. As Jack watched, she swung her body about then, in a display of athletic confidence, she let go of the Jupiter arm, transferring smoothly to the jolly Saturn instead.

Moving outwards through the Solar System wasn't going to work out well for her. Uranus didn't get discovered until well after Rudolph was dead; there were only seven planets in antiquity. But Lara had only made the transfer to work her way closer into the center without getting bashed in the head by Io or Callisto. As Jack watched from the ground, she leapt upwards, catching earth's trailing Moon and swinging her body up onto the rod connecting the Big Blue Marble itself.

The inner worlds were on complete metal disks, themselves outfitted with epicycle-like gears that, at least as far as Jack could figure, translated their Keplerian ellipses into more readily circular mechanisms. Not that any of this was in scale, mind you. He winced again as she ducked through one gear, then another, planets the size of iron beach balls rolling past her.

Then she was able to climb onto the great dome of the Sun itself, and after that it was a (seemingly) simple traverse down the control mechanisms back to the safety of the ground.

"One of these days you are going to kill yourself doing that," Jack told her.

"There's always a first time," she answered drily. "Worth it, though?"

"Yeah. Worth it." All four of them were quiet then, watching the great mechanism dance its intricate ballet above them. "Hell of a sight," Jack added. "Now let's go see if that plinth has opened up."

"Okay, Jack," Daniel said as they walked away. "You were right."

"Oh, don't look at me," Jack replied. "If it was up to me, I'd have just used explosives on the door."

* * *

There wasn't anything inside the plinth. Not as such.

The entire plinth had raised up, all but braining the three-headed statue against the domed ceiling of the alchemist's chamber, exposing a narrow circular stairway going down.

"Do you hear Mademoiselle, those musicians of hell?" Jana sung softly as they began the descent.

"Eh?" Daniel asked.

"I can never remember the rest of it," Jana said. "For some reason it seemed appropriate for following a circular stairway into the bowels of the Earth," she added with a shrug.

"We've found the Hole to Hell," Lara observed, looking at the glistening limestone. "This is ancient. Pre-Christian, I'm fairly certain."

"Stay tight," Jack said. "Doctor Rubešova, you watch our six."

"Hole to Hell?" Daniel had to ask.

Jana chose to answer. "Václav Hájek mentions it in his Czech Chronicle; he recounts legends of a crack in the limestone from which came strange beasts. At some point a local duke lowered a condemned prisoner down on a rope. The prisoner got his pardon, but it didn't do him much good; his hair had turned stark white and he had gone entirely mad."

"So when was all this?" Daniel asked.

"Perhaps ninth century. Hájek was writing quite a number of years later. By that time the basis of the current castle had been constructed — that dates from 1270 or so. Not that it looks quite the same today. Ferdinand III had the tower and moat destroyed, and in the 18th century it was remodeled into a sort of chalet. And then left to moulder, of course, through the Communist era. In any case, the original opening to the pit was covered up with limestone slabs and a chapel consecrated to Saint Michael built on top of that. And another odd thing; there's an image of a female centaur in that chapel. Not what you usually see in those sorts of structures!"

"I have no ideas," Daniel shrugged.

"There was a Swedish mercenary captain camped out briefly in the ruin during the Thirty Years War," Jana went on. "A nasty piece of work named Oronto, who had an unsavory reputation as a black magician and was purportedly searching for the secret to Eternal Life. He might have caught wind of the same thing we are after. The locals took care of him like they did Heydrich, but a bit more efficiently; they shot at him through an open window."

"The only centaur that comes to mind is Chiron," Lara said reflectively. "The healer, immortal by reason of his parentage. He was struck by a poisoned arrow from Hercules. Unable to heal himself and unwilling to endure an eternity of suffering, he gave up his immortality."

"Yes," Jana replied, "But this was a Centuaride. There's even less of a clear connection there. Incidentally, she's also holding a bow. Left-handed. Make of that what you will!"

Jack held them up for a moment. He pressed his hand against the wall. "Feel that thrumming?" he said.

"Maybe," Lara replied after trying the same. "The Šárka, perhaps? We've gone down far enough to be close to the water table."

"Hope those ancient Celts knew how to build sump pumps," Jack said. "Hey; it's opening out."

They'd reached the bottom of the staircase. The passage here was wider, but the ceiling was low enough they almost had to stoop. The feeling of the great weight of stone above their heads was palpable, oppressive, not helped at all but the dark wetness of the stone.

"Look at those fallen stones," Lara pointed.

"Not helping," Jack grunted, saying aloud what they had all been feeling.

"I think this opened up to the air a lot further down the side of the gorge," Lara said. "This is limestone cave, water-shaped. The Šárka probably changed course some time in the last thousand years, and natural settling closed off this cave. Then later geology opened a sinkhole from above."

They moved along the roughly-flattened floor of the cave, until it came around a bend and opened up into a larger natural cavern.

"Magnificent," Jana breathed.

Rough niches had been carved into the walls, and large stones set out in a purposeful, regular pattern across the floor. They were carved, the explorers could see in the glow, with intricate series of abstract geometric shapes and spirals.

"Neolithic," Daniel said. "This is _ancient_."

"Oh, there's some pots for you, too," Jack pointed.

Jana nearly jumped in that direction. "LBK!" she said immediately.

"Linear Pottery Culture," Daniel agreed excitedly. "Best defined neolithic horizon in this area."

"Wait…" Jack said. "You guys love pots so much, you named a whole people after them?"

The others ignored him.

"This is a truly wonderful find," Jana enthused. "Another Únětice. Such a pity it was used as Rudolph's best hiding place and blocked off from archaeology for so long!"

"Um…guys?" Lara had not joined in the general excitement of discovery. "What is causing that glow?"

The cavern was kidney-shaped, with a large bend between larger and smaller portions. Jana, reluctantly, left off studying the pottery fragments and joined the others as they moved cautiously to where they could see the rest of the cavern.

"There it is," Lara said softly.

There was a large crystal container, clear, half-filled with a liquid that glowed. Beside it stood the somewhat surprising presence of yet another Horus Jar; this one slightly larger, in the same dark pitch-like material of the several _zat'nik'tel's_ Lara had now seen.

"Oh, I know that glow," Jack said from beside her.

"So do I," Daniel said.

"That's not a glow I like," Jack continued. "Bad things follow that glow around."

"Naquadah." Daniel nodded.

"Guys?" Lara questioned. "What? I'm pretty sure you aren't referring to the Chalcolithic Predynastic culture of ancient Egypt."

"It's a super-heavy element," Daniel explained. "It's what the Stargate is made of. In its liquid form, it is a power source."

"So, what? Rudolph's alchemists supercharged his Horus Draught with energy from some alien power source? That was the Philosopher's Stone everyone was seeking?"

"Well, they did keep a dodo alive for three hundred years past the extinction of the rest of her species," Jana observed. She was obviously trying to sound dry about it, but it was overwhelming her just a bit, too.

"And where the hell did they get this naquadah of yours?" Lara demanded.

"At a guess," the Colonel said dryly, "I'd say there." He pointed.

"Longinus. Christ," Lara said.

"Well, yes." Jana wasn't so far gone she couldn't snark a little. "Christ. Consistent in many of the legends is the presence of the blood of Christ somewhere on the blade. Plus relics like the Holy Lance in Vienna have a nail from the True Cross wired to them for extra authenticity."

Lara shook her head. "The shape is all wrong. The Holy Lance is usually depicted with a broad, flat blade. That thing is more like the painting we saw upstairs; a leaf-shaped blade."

"Yeah," the Colonel said. "That's because that isn't a Roman lance." They had been moving slowly towards the low stone on which sat the glowing container of what purported to be Elixir of Life. A rough man-shaped sculpture stood in a shallow niche across the stone, the lance in question propped up against it.

"Then what is it?" Lara demanded.

The sculpture moved. "Down!" the Colonel shouted. He pushed Jana down behind cover of one of the low stones, and leapt for another himself. The rough man-shaped sculpture had picked up the lance and pointed it in their direction. Electricity crackled around the tip as the leaf opened up. "It's a Ma'Tok staff!" the Colonel yelled.

"A what?" Lara checked to see the other archaeologist was putting his head down, then she dove for cover herself. The thing erupted in flame, a sizzling bolt shooting across the cavern to explode a shower of rock chips off the Colonel's shelter.

"A Goa'uld Staff Weapon!" the Colonel shouted. "I don't think it's brooms we have to worry about with this golem."

Lara stuck her head up. The Colonel had called it, all right. This could be nothing other than Rabbi Loew's fabled creation, set here as final guard to the Elixir of Life that Emperor Rudolph had apparently decided delivered immortality at too high a cost.

She was shuddering inside. It hadn't hit home with the wolves the SS had experimented on, or even the dodo that Rudolph's alchemists must have doped. She wondered for a moment how many others of the fabulous animals of his collection had ended up facing this strange extended half-life. No; the golem is what did it for her.

Because the golem was obviously human. "He's…he's a bog man!" Lara shouted across to the others. The staff weapon fired again at the sound of her voice. Determined guard the golem might be, but tactically he still had a lot to learn.

"Bogey man?" Jack shouted back.

"Bog!" Daniel shouted towards him. "Peat bog. Natural mummification. Perfectly preserved bodies from as early as the Bronze Age. People started finding them when they first dug up the peat for fuel."

That was entirely too long a speech for the golem. He fired twice in the direction of Daniel's boulder. Lara heard the other archaeologist cry out and bit her lip. She hoped he hadn't been hurt badly.

Lara reached for her pistols. But she was shaking too badly to use them. Because he was human. Because he was a human victim of the Horus Draught. A bronze-age man, condemned to immortality without speech or even the ability to form complex thought. His nervous tissue could not have been in great shape when he was brought back to life, no matter how clever Rabbi Loew and his assistants had been.

She'd been taking the Horus Draught. Was she going to end up like this, suspended in half-life, only shreds of tissue and shreds of instinct left to her? The horror of that thought almost overcame her. She tried to lift her pistols again, but for a long moment wasn't sure if she meant to turn them on the golem…or on herself.

"Lara!" Jack was shouting her name. "We have to flank it. We're sitting ducks like this!"

"I…I can't!" Lara bit out.

"Daniel?" the Colonel demanded.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow," was the only reply from that direction.

"Well, there goes all my golem lore out the window," Jana cursed from behind her own rock. "No shem, no handy 'emet' on the forehead that can be easily altered to read 'met.'"

There was a rumble from overhead. "Oh, this day just got even better," the Colonel said.

"The roof!" Jana screamed.

"This whole place is collapsing," the Colonel yelled. "People, we have to retreat. Now! Daniel, Jana, you move first. Lara and I will cover."

Lara could hear Daniel working his way to his feet, cursing in pain the entire time. "Shit shit shit shit shit," he seemed to be saying.

"Now, Daniel!" the Colonel ordered.

Lara fumbled her way over the top of her own boulder. She fired blindly, trying to cover the other's escape.

"Your turn, Lara," Jack called across to her a few moments later. "Now, Tomb Raider. Get a move on!"

Lara stood and made a run for the next cover, the Colonel's VP70 ringing in her ears. She heard Jack make his own run for it and tried to make herself stand and cover him. The staff weapon was mercifully silent, for once.

"We're retreating," she gasped.

"His programming," Jana said through panting breaths. "We're not after, the Elixir, any more. So he doesn't need, to attack us."

"Without…orders." Lara dragged a hand across her eyes.

The cavern was continuing to shake. Too much. The roof was noticeably lower, now. Slabs of stone were coming loose from the ceiling, crashing into the floor around them.

"We're not going to make it!" Jack said. Already, the gap between the floor and the top of the exit tunnel was barely waist high.

Lara turned. She stood up as fully as she could in the shaking, shrinking cavern, and looked back at the creature who had been guarding it for so many generations. The golem looked back at her. She wondered what could be going through its mind. What a bronze-age man could make of these people from a world so many centuries in his future. What could be shaping in whatever remnants of humanity remained in a robot without any orders.

The golem seemed to shrug. It set down the staff weapon. Then it stood as tall as it was able against the ceiling of the cavern. And braced.

"He's…he's holding it up!" Lara said. She marveled at it. Even with his veins coursing with Horus Draught, how could sinew hold against tons of stone?

"Move move move move!" Jack was in full drill sergeant mode. He pushed at Lara, practically carried Daniel past the narrowing lintel. The stairwell was stable, at least for the moment. Lara crouched there, looked back at the golem that had spent its last free moment making it possible for other humans to reach the light again.

"Joseph!" a voice cried out beside her. Jana. She shouted something in yiddish just before more rocks fell, closing off the neolithic cavern for good.

"You have done God's work tonight," Daniel translated in a rough voice. "He saved us."

* * *

The Tomb Raider was the last to exit the long spiral staircase of the Hole to Hell. She did not look back, nor did she look the others in the eye.

"Well, now we know what Rudoph's secret was," Daniel Jackson said softly.

"Yes," Lara said. "Now we do." Her eyes were dark and unfathomable.


	15. Chapter 14: Game of Drones

They were coming fast and furious there for a while, but for every call-out that made it into the last chapter (the game "Half-Life," the musical "Hair") there's a hundred bits of trivia that had to get left out. The Emerald Tablet, Die Glocke, John Dee, Gulliver's Travels, Titus-Bode, the Antikythera Mechanism, the Prague Astronomical Clock…the last four in the Orrery scene alone! (And, yeah, Movie!Lara has played with a similar gadget, so you might call the whole scene a call-out to that).

(And, yes…I'm quite aware of the timeline of discovery of Deimos and Phobos. Hence Jack's remark when he notices them. It is historically defensible, however. The orderly Medieval mind that was finally starting to let go of the Aristotelian universe still figured that since Venus had no moon, and Earth had one, Mars must have two. This is the same kind of thinking that led to the variously-named Phaeton or Tiamat or Maldak once existing where the Asteroid Belt is now — and presumably caused Jonathan Swift to mention those same Martian moons a good century before telescopes could discern them.)

Incidentally, the Siege of Marienburg, Houska Castle, Rabbi Loew, the centaur painting in St. Michael's Chapel and early Celtic mound builders in Central Europe are all real; Oronto, the Door to Hell, the Holy Spear, and the Golem of Prague are all established legends; only Captain Giacomo Gagliardi's adventure with the Wurm of Marienburg, all of the interior layout of Hrad Houska, and the true nature of the golem as a revivified bronze-age man wielding a Goa'uld Staff Weapon are unique to me.

* * *

Hrad Houska, Greater Prague, N50° 6' 30.0024" E14° 20' 58.3656"

* * *

The small group walked back out together. It took a while. From the winding stairway, now choked with rubble, out of the Hermes Chamber (the dodo still following them with suspicious eyes), across the Latin-inscribed floor and under the massive, now-still orrery. Then up again, and through corridors which still stunk of ozone and spat the occasional fitful spark, the shattered mechanisms of rusted spikes and wicked-looking saw blades mute testament of the struggle to get through.

Jackson was clutching several of the books they'd found in his good hand. "You don't understand," he complained. "Now that we know who the author of the Voynich Manuscript is, we know how important the lost chapters could be to us."

"National Security," O'Neill said bluntly. "We're taking them with us. Talk to our State Department."

"I answer to Václav Havel," Jana said shortly. "They can call _us_. My department will make full facsimiles for you but that original does not leave the Republic." She unbent a little then. "You can keep the Yiddish humor book, Doctor Jackson," she said. "You look like you could use the cheering up."

Then at last it was out into the chill of near-dawn air, the cold night winds blowing down from Siberia and making the sunlight and flowers of the Prague Spring seem far away. White wreathed a black Škoda where the burbling exhaust hit the chill, damp air.

Jana went to the waiting BIS men. "I'm afraid we're going to have to call our friends in the URNA again," she said. "We may have inadvertently released some things that really should not be left running loose. We'll also need to call on the Medical Examiner, I will be bringing several of my collections staff with me tomorrow morning, and we need to find an, um, an Animal Control officer as well."

"Tonight, Ma'am?"

Jana yawned. "Tomorrow will be soon enough for the rest of it. But get those extra bodies out here as soon as you can."

Jackson had been sent to have his arm looked at by one of the officers. Lara had gone with him. She hadn't said a word since they had left the Hermes Chamber.

"So now what?" O'Neill came back to join her. The BIS men were all busy on their radios, allowing them a moment of privacy.

"Now I intend to get very drunk…"

"Want help?"

"…And then go to bed to dream about athletic archaeologists in very tight tops."

"Ah," O'Neill said. "Well."

"I kid," Jana told him. "I wanted to see the look on your face."

"So you don't…" he was floundering a little now. Good. He needed it. He had that kind of hyper-masculine confidence that could be a little off-putting.

"I could use a drinking buddy," Jana said firmly. "No other promises."

Jackson was bandaged now. Jana reflected they were going to have a hard time prying the Voynich out of his other hand. He'd managed to get his nose into it already, and was starting to babble excitedly in at least two languages.

Jana saw O'Neill was looking back in that direction too. "You've got a good team there, Colonel," she said.

"She's not one of mine," O'Neill gestured to the slim figure who stood slightly aloof, her skin pale in the dim light.

"Maybe she should be," Jana said bluntly. "She's good. More important, I've seen how you look after your people, Colonel. She needs that."

"Maybe." There was a world in that one word.

She rejoined the others, then. O'Neill went to borrow a phone and check in.

"It was right here all along," Jackson was saying, pointing at what to her eyes was a particularly obscure illustration even for the Voynich. "The blade shape and other external details are very much like the Holy Lance of Vienna, even to the golden sleeve wrapped around it. But he's drawn it as a sort of primitive cutaway; where the Nail might be, he's drawn a technically sophisticated depiction of the container of liquid Naquadah, as well as other working parts of a Ma'Tok Staff."

He looked up at the others, as if expecting they would answer him like university students at a lecture. He blinked. "Don't you see? Primitive association; they poured a little of one magical healing liquid into another. They were lucky they didn't blow themselves up."

"Jackson," Jana said quietly. "It's been a long night." She looked meaningfully around the far from empty parking lot of the old castle, waited until he noticed, caught his eye again. "They're cleared, but…" she said, and left it at that. He became more subdued at that.

"Lara. Lara." Jana stepped to the other woman. "Where will you go now?"

It took a long time for her to answer. "I don't know," she said.

"Oh, but you have to come back with us!" Jackson said, surprised. "We're learning so much here!"

"People." O'Neill came back from the direction of the cars. There was purpose in his stride. "I just talked to Hammond. Carter missed her check-in."

Jackson jumped to his feet. "Is Sam in trouble?" he asked.

"Don't know yet," O'Neill said shortly. "Doctor," he turned to Jana. "Rain check on that drunk?"

"Next time you are in Prague," Jana said. "Come on…I'll drive you to the airport."

* * *

Moria, P3X-9998

* * *

"Okay, people, settle down." Major Carter said. "Sergeant Garcia?"

"Ma'am!" The young Air Force sergeant was visibly shaken, but he gave her a salute.

Carter returned it with a quick motion. "Field protocol, Sergeant," she corrected him without expression. "Casualties?"

"Colonel Singh and Captain Scott are dead, Ma'am. We were unable to retrieve the bodies when we retreated. Bostiche is also casualty; Corpsman Vasquez is seeing to him. This leaves SG11 with four men under arms."

"Thank you, Sergeant. I'm sorry for your loss. Weapons?"

"P90's and sidearms only, Ma'am. We weren't issued zats for this assignment. We're pretty low on ammo as well."

"Get me an ammo count as soon as convenient. Corpsman?"

Vasquez answered her. "Bostiche took a staff blast mid-torso. The PASGT stopped the main blast but he's pretty scorched. I have him on IV drip but I'm holding off on the morphine for now. He's stable at the moment but I'm worried about managing his fluid balance or dealing with infection over anything but the short term. We simply aren't equipped for that."

"Thank you Corpsman. Rations? Can anyone answer that?"

After a glance around Sergeant Garcia answered her. "Sorry, Ma'am; we messed with the scientists. Best we could come up between us is whatever gedunk is in our pockets and what's left in our canteens."

"Thank you," Major Carter said. "Sergeant, after this I want to draw up a guard roster with you. We're going to sort our assets into two fire teams, and yes I am assigning myself to one of them. I expect the situation to evolve quickly but this gives us the best punch in the short-term."

She turned towards the rest of the small group huddled in the cover of one of the excavated craters. They looked a little shell-shocked.

"Doctor?" she looked towards Bear. "Head count?" she prompted him.

"We've got everyone, Sam," he said unhappily. "Had to leave a lot of gear behind."

"Any injuries?"

"Nothing to mention. Well, Goldie has a bad ankle."

Major Carter's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "What are our food supplies like?"

"I don't know. French mostly looked after that. Frenchy?"

"Err, yes." The thin, nearly bald researcher named looked up. He spread his hands. "We didn't make much of a deal of it," he said. "We had marmites sent out from the SGC mess every couple of days, box lunches for the cold meals. Some jerry cans for water and when Davidson was in a good mood he'd send us a couple of those cardboard things from Starbucks, too. I think we finished the last of that coffee around noon, though."

"So we have maybe a day's rations here," Major Carter said.

"Heck, we're out of coffee _now_!" the researcher replied. "Who cares? We won't be here more than a day before the Air Force figures out there's something wrong."

Major Carter held up her hand to stop him. "Garcia?" she questioned.

"Colonel Singh checked in once a day at exactly 1800," he said. "That was an hour ago," he added belatedly, realizing he probably should have brought it to the attention of his officer earlier.

Carter did a quick mental calculation. "If I'm right, Hammond will give it until 1200 SGC time. We'll need to be in position to respond. People, I can not impress on you enough how important it is we maintain COMSEC. Our opponent can be assumed to have captured at least one of our radios."

She swung on Bear again. "Doctor, did your people do as I asked?"

"What? Oh, right. Yes; we buried Vaal again."

"And..?"

"Yeah." The bearded giant took a moment to consult with one of his people. "Yeah, we spread that red dirt across the whole thing. With our hands. Why did we do that, again?"

"Depleted naquadah," Carter explained tersely. "If we are lucky it should shield Vaal from the Goa'uld's instruments."

"Oh, nice!" Bear chortled. "We've got a secret weapon, then. We're in great shape!"

Carter didn't reply to this immediately. "We're still too close to the Goa'uld and we left a trail getting here," she said. "Vasquez, make sure Bostiche is good to move. We're shifting camp within the hour."

* * *

"Sam?"

They had moved camp. Major Carter hadn't raised her voice once, but she had kept a tight herd on the survey party, making sure they kept to the ridges and left as few marks of their passage as possible. She had set out guards, and sent two of the Air Force people out as observation posts to try to catch any Goa'uld scouts that might be following after them. Then she assigned responsibilities for latrine and setting up a rude medical tent.

Now they were a short distance from the others, up on a rise of ground where she could survey the terrain around them. Bear could see her shoulders visibly slump slightly as she allowed herself to relax slightly.

"Can you do this?" Bear had to ask.

"I have to," the Major said. "SG11 just lost their whole chain of command. Again. I need to be the commander they need if I'm to get any of these people home."

"Not all of my people are idiots, Sam," Bear gently remonstrated. "Frenchy and a couple of the others know how to use a gun, if it has to come to that."

She dragged a hand across her eyes. "Appreciated, Doctor, but… SG11 are trained for this, and used to working as a team. We can't just fold civilians in without a lot of time for coordinated training."

"I still don't get this," Bear said. "All we have to do is sit tight until rescue comes, right?"

"I hope so, but before 1200 comes I need to have eyeballs on the gate." She grimaced. "Doctor, there's a military axiom. It's one of the oldest ones in the book. 'Don't plan for what the enemy _may_ do, plan for what they _can_ do.'"

Bear shook his beard. "I'm not sure I get it."

Sam sighed in frustration. "That Goa'uld down there. Assume she's as smart as I am. If I was in her situation, and I knew my enemies might be receiving reinforcement through the gate, then the first thing I'd do is roll some big boulders over there. Push them right against the event horizon, and incoming matter won't even be able to integrate. Bury the gate well enough, and the network won't even dial it!"

"She's a Goa'uld," Bear said dismissively. "She's probably an idiot."

"We can't count on that," Major Carter shook her head. "Look for how they can hurt you worst, and prepare for that."

* * *

SGC, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

"Enter!" Hammond called. He checked the clock on the wall, then his watch. Two hours until they attempted contact with PXX-9998.

"I just looked over the preliminary report from Doctor Jackson," Chief Medical Officer Janet Frasier said briskly. "Operations caught me on the way up," she added. "They asked me to pass on that the rest of SG1 is in the air and should be on base by tonight. I'll have some shots prepped to help them with their jet-lag."

"I will be sure to pass that happy news on to Colonel O'Neill," Hammond said dryly.

"The short of it is, Sir, is that it appears the missing element we've been trying to track down is naquadah. The Goa'uld adopted it into their biochemical work a long time ago, and as a result almost everything that concerns us, from Hathor's drug to the extracts of wild medicinal plants on Chulak, behaves differently when exposed to concentrated doses of naquadah."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Major, but naquadah does not occur naturally on Earth?"

"Quite, sir. I think this even answers Doctor Jackson's silphium obsession; if there was any naquadah in the soil originally — it may have even been salted by the Gou'ald when Ra was still here — it was gone by Roman times. That reduced the potency of the plant and its extracts considerably."

"Naquadah certainly gets around," Hammond agreed. "And how is Cassandra?"

"Very well, sir. She's starting a new grade next month."

"That is good to hear."

"I'm worried about Carter too," Janet said then. "No word yet?"

General Hammond looked at the clock on the wall. Looked at the watch on his wrist. "Two more hours," he said.

* * *

Moria, P3X-9998

* * *

She had just gotten done checking on Airman Bostiche. Vasquez had judged he was stable enough to risk morphine for his increasing pain, and had given him two of the six ampules she had left. Frenchy, at least, had had the presence of mind to lug one of the jerry cans of fresh water with him, but the Corpsman was quite right; they didn't have what they needed to keep the injured man hydrated.

"Sam!" the bearded geologist called to her as she crossed the rude camp. "Sam, we've been talking, and we think its time to do something with Vaal."

"Doctor." Carter stopped where she was. "Walk with me," she said.

Bear gave a confused shrug. The scientist he was talking to didn't — quite — get the nuances, and said nothing as they left the camp.

"You can't do that," she said as soon as they were out of earshot.

"What, talk to you?" Bear was only slightly confused. This wasn't his style of personal management, but he'd been around the military. "You don't want me to call you 'Sam' anymore, is that it?" he said.

"Doctor." Carter gave a long sigh. "Not what I meant."

"I know, loneliness of command and all that. I thought I was being a Maturin to your Aubrey. Sam…Carter…I thought I was helping."

"You are. Oh, you are. But that only works when you don't make it look like privilege in front of the others."

"Jim, not in front of the Klingons? Is that what you are saying?"

Carter had to laugh at that. "Something like that," she said. "This is tough enough without you arguing with my orders in front of everybody. Say your piece here, and don't stir them up."

"I don't like it," Bear said.

"Nobody likes it," Carter said. "Military discipline is like Democracy; the worst possible system for getting things done, except for all the others."

"Okay, fine. So take it in private, then. When are you going to use Vaal?"

"Use it for what?" Carter was openly curious. She wondered if there was something she missed. More, she hoped there was something she had missed.

Bear laughed shortly. "I didn't think that far. Make us some weapons. Supplies. Brew up some coffee for that idiot Frenchy before the caffeine withdrawal headaches send him into the arms of the Goa'uld."

"Dammit, Bear!" Carter was angry enough for a moment to relax on the hard discipline she'd been holding herself to. "Don't you think I don't want to do that? Can't you see how much I want to be the scientific genius who comes up with the easy way out of all of our troubles?"

"But you _are_ a scientist, Sam. And an incredible one. Sam, that's what you _do_. I've read the logs. I can't count the number of times you came up with some incredible MacGuyver of a thing and saved your team's asses."

"I know, Bear, I know," Sam was deeply frustrated. "But I need to be a military officer right now. As much as I want to see that technological quick fix, this is the smart way to proceed."

They were silent for a long moment. "I'm surprised you didn't see the problem yet," she said at last.

"Oh?"

"Naquadah. Vaal won't run without it, and that's the entire point of this planet. This planet is mined out."

"Oh. Hah!" Bear hit himself histrionically in the forehead. "Oh, now I have something to keep the others quiet, all right!" He thought for another long moment, chuckled. "I doubt the Goa'uld have good coffee, either."

"Doctor?" Major Carter had one thing more to add. "If it helps, think of it as just a different tool set. As much as some people make fun of it, military science is a science, too. And I think it is the science with the best chance of getting all my people home."

"Okay, I can accept that," Bear rumbled. "But I still think…"

The radio interrupted them. For a moment Carter's eyes flashed — was someone on her team being stupid enough to break radio silence?"

The voice they heard disabused her of that idea. It was gloating, arrogant, so over-the-top it didn't need the eerie flanging effect to mark it instantly as being Goa'uld.

"I would speak to the leader of the remaining rabble," the Goa'uld said.

Carter winced. "Dammit!" she said, her finger held back off the button. "She's upped the operational tempo on me."

"Whaa…?" Once again the visible thought crossed Bear's features that military science had a technology and a terminology all to its own.

Carter jammed the button down. "This is Major Samantha Carter, United States Air Force," she said.

"I care not for your titles, slave. I am Tanit, once-consort to Ba'al. Come out from your holes and make obeisance to me and I might spare your miserable lives!"

"Can't tell you how many times I've heard that," Carter said drily.

"I am your God!" the Goa'uld raged in reply. "My power is beyond comprehension! I am all…"

"Powerful!" Carter cut her off. "Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! Unimaginable power! UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING! ET CETERA, ET CETERA!" Her voice had risen to a shriek to rival the Goa'uld's.

"…Sam?"

Carter took her finger off the button. "Just go with it, okay?" she grinned tightly.

"You intrigue me, slave," the Goa'uld purred, demonstrating one of those 180's they were so well known for. "What are your people called?"

"We're the Tauri," Carter said proudly.

"Never heard of you," the Goa'uld all but sniffed.

"You must be out of the loop," Carter said back with a biting tone. "All the System Lords know of the Tauri. Hell, I'll bet you don't even know what happened to Ra."

"The Sun-lord?" Tanit's voice was uncertain, although she tried to hide it behind the usual Goa'uld arrogance.

"We're the ones that killed him," Carter said with satisfaction. "Hurt Apophis pretty bad, too…you hear he just lost two Ha'taks? No? Then you have been out of the loop. Poor dear. You've been on the run for too long. What happened — Ba'al kick you out?"

"Jesus, Carter!" Bear was aghast. "Do you have to bait the Goa'uld? What's next - spitting in Cthulhu's eye?"

"You may have done all that," the Goa'uld admitted grudgingly, "But I don't see your forces here. You are just a small work party. And you won't be getting reinforcement."

"Neither will you, hon. Unless I miss my guess, you came through the gate with everything you have on your back."

"I have enough Jaffa to strike you down and take this world's treasures for my own!"

"You are welcome to them. But I betcha can't. You don't know how many men I have under arms."

The Goa'uld almost purred. "And you don't know how many more of my Jaffa may have joined me since I drove you away from the chapa'ai."

"No, I don't," Carter admitted. "But I think I learned a lot more from this little conversation than you did. Major Carter, out." And she turned off the radio.

Bear was in shocked silence for some moments before he could finally find his voice. "I did not know you had that in you, Sam."

"Lots of watching Colonel O'Neill do it," Carter said.

"But…rice pudding? What was that all about. Oh. Oh, wait, there goes the shoe. Did you just quote…"

"The Doctor," Sam grinned. "Seven, talking to Davros."

* * *

Carter was left to herself to think it out. She wished she could talk out her options with someone, but Bear simply lacked the military background. Nor was Sergeant Garcia an option. He simply wasn't senior enough to be able to function in a confidante role. Their hastily cobbled-together chain of command could not stand the strain. As much as it went against every bit of the ingrained honesty of a working scientist, she had to pretend she had the answers.

Tanit had jumped the tempo on her. That was an idea that was slowly going away again the command colleges due to some very large flaws with the theory, but the basic idea is that if you could cut inside the other commander's decision loop, you won. Tanit had made a big move here. Not in contacting her, per se. What she'd done, is demonstrate absolutely she could intercept any communications she might attempt when Hammond opened the gate from his end.

And she was on a time limit. A harsh one. She didn't think Tanit had any grasp of how limited her options were there. A Goa'uld wouldn't care if one of their Jaffa was dying for lack of proper medical care. Well…maybe this Goa'uld would. Tanit was in the somewhat unusual position of being so short of resources herself she might just appreciate Sam's position.

Resources. Carter rubbed her eyes, shook out her hair. It didn't help. When it came down to it, Tanit wasn't in a good position to take slaves, and she sure as heck didn't have any symbiotes to spare (unless Goa'uld biology was a lot different than she thought it was). Although now that she thought of it, if size and an imposing mien were all that mattered, Bear would make a great First Prime. So the main utility the Tauri would have for her is as bargaining chips.

"What's the worst your enemy can do to you?" Carter asked aloud. She could bargain for food and water from the SGC, but none of that would reach Carter's people unless they gave themselves up. Which Hammond would quickly realize and that made that option a lose-lose.

"Time to go," she sighed to herself. She needed a vantage point on the gate, and she had only thirty minutes left.

* * *

SGC, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

"Chevron One encoded!" Harriman said tersely into the microphone.

It never failed to put a little thrill in General Hammond. The massive ring of super-heavy alien metal was thrumming with power, the whole room shaking with the subsonic vibrations as the central ring turned.

The next symbol popped up on the dialing computer display. In the Embarkation room, another chevron flashed with light as it briefly moved over the next part of the gate address, then returned. "Chevron Two locked!" Harriman said, his voice rising in pitch. He always, Hammond thought genially, got a bit over-excited doing this.

* * *

In his seat in the red-eye from Prague, Colonel O'Neill was wide awake. Hammond would be dialing now. In a few more minutes the SGC might know if Carter was safe.

He trusted her. She was a _good_ officer. Not always as certain of her skills as she might be, but the kind of young officer who was unfailing professional, unstintingly competent. If it came to that, she was ready for command. Whatever was happening on that remote world, he had confidence that she would solve it.

She'd better. If she let them hurt her, he'd never forgive her.

* * *

Carter bit her lip. The last chevron lit up and there was a rush of sound as the wormhole established itself from the world she was on to the light-years distant SGC. There was a familiar fountain of light as the event horizon of the wormhole interface blew out for a moment, then stabilized into the rippling glowing curtain.

Tanit hadn't blocked the gate. But she had her forces covering it, and they weren't camped on the platform like idiots, either. They were in good physical cover with nice clear fields of fire, and anything less tough than an M1A1 Abrams was going to have a hard time of it.

Oh, wait. It was worse than that. She fiddled with the focus on the monoculars a bit, but her first glance had been as good as she was going to get. They had a staff cannon. Looked like it had been re-purposed from a Death Glider, which was a pretty good trick.

She pressed down the transmit button. "This is Major Carter! Do not attempt passage through the gate!" Her radio squealed with heterodyne. Dammit. The Goa'uld was trying to jam her, all right. "I say again, do not attempt passage through the gate!" She shouted, hoping she was forcing her voice through the interference, "Do not attempt passage through the gate!"

She released the transmit button, and the interference stopped a moment later. "Now that we understand each other," the Goa'uld purred at her. "I will allow you communication within limits, Tauri. You will ask your people to send food and slaves. And if I am satisfied, I might even let some of you go."

"They aren't going to go for that, Tanit," Carter said.

"Colonel Singh!" Hammond's voice came. "Report!"

"Will you let me reply?" Carter asked. When the Goa'uld did not decline, she keyed again. "Colonel Singh and Captain Scott are dead, Sir. The rest of us are okay, but we're cut off from the gate."

In the back of her mind, she was counting seconds. Radio was too primitive for most Goa'uld, but she couldn't assume Tanit hadn't figured out how to direction-find. She could not afford to stay in her current vantage point for long.

"Lord of the Tauri!" the Goa'uld called out. "How are you addressed?"

"General Hammond, United States Air Force, Ma'am," Carter heard his voice say. He was ever the courteous one.

"Hammond of the Tauri, your people will live only as long as I am satisfied with the gifts you send me! Do not attempt to send warriors through. You! Rice Pudding! Explain to your lord!"

Carter grimaced. This was going to be a fun one to explain. Or to live down, if it came to that. "Sir, they have the gate covered. I say again, they have troops covering the gate. It would be suicide to attempt passage."

There was a long silence from the other side. "I have asked for water to be sent down," Hammond's voice said. "Food will arrive shortly."

"Good," purred the Goa'uld. "I can see this will be a splendid relationship. Make sure the slaves carrying supplies are strong ones. The Tauri I chased away from the chapa'ai were weak and foolish."

Uh, oh. Carter needed to head that off before Hammond said something that would get them in worse trouble. "Tanit, may I speak?"

"Speak, Rice Pudding."

"General Hammond, I have injured. We need medical supplies. And we need food and water as well. I suggest you make contact again at 1200, on fifty meters. Repeat, contact at 1200 and fifty meters."

The howling interference came then. When it was silent, the Goa'uld was speaking. "I begin to think you were contemplating another trick, Rice Pudding. What were these numbers of yours?"

"1200 is how we mark time, Tanit. It means noon. And fifty meters is the wavelength of a radio signal; it is a way to describe the communications frequencies we use."

"Then I will permit this. You may repeat your message, Rice Pudding."

"Thank you. General Hammond, repeat, 1200 and fifty meters."

"Understood."

* * *

Hammond wheeled from the board, holding his thumb over the microphone as he gave Harriman the universal "Cut this off" symbol. Walter didn't need to be told what to do. His specialities before Stargate Command had included bomb navigation and weapons control, and he knew as well as Hammond did that no competent officer would ever say "repeat" on the radio.

Unless they meant one thing.

* * *

The FIM-92J came out of the event horizon at barely supersonic speed, the rocket motor having not had nearly enough time to bring it up to the full Mach 2.5 the missile was capable of. It was still magnitudes above the reaction speed of even the enhanced Jaffa.

The operator back in the Gate Room at the SGC had been canny indeed, firing down at just enough of an angle that the proximity-fused warhead triggered at very nearly the range Carter had specified. And he wasn't alone; two more missiles followed, walking the pattern outwards while still in a direct line with the axis of the gate — but the first had shattered Tanit's only heavy weapon.

Her scream of rage resounded in Carter's ears. "Time to go," she said aloud. "That is one unhappy snake."

She had to give it to Tanit's troups. They didn't panic and run, even when several bulky objects came flying out of the gate to land on the platform. Carter was almost willing to call it a studied insult, for that was how Tanit would see it, no matter how humanitarian the intent was. Hammond had sent through food and water like he promised. And with that, he shut down the gate.

* * *

Moria, P3X-9998

* * *

It was dark now on Moria, but Carter was still awake, sitting a little away from the rest of the camp. They were still at an impasse, except SGC knew of their plight now…and Bostiche was getting worse.

Her radio clicked softly. "Tauri?" The voice was a lot more subdued this time.

"I'm awake, Tanit," Carter said.

"You Tauri are a tougher nut than I thought," the Goa'uld admitted.

"You're not bad yourself, sister." Carter couldn't help it; she felt an odd sort of kinship with this lone, struggling warrior queen. "A little advice, though? Next time, cover the gate in rocks."

The Goa'uld chuckled harshly. "I should have. But my Jaffa were starving."

Which was an unusual sentiment. Carter probed a little. "What's a Jaffa?" she put the shrug into her words.

"They're all that I have," the Goa'uld said with a surprising honesty.

"I guessed right, didn't I." Carter's voice was not without compassion. "You lost your position in Ba'al's forces, and you've been on the run since. Trying to find a new base of power. Hoping to one day build yourself up again."

"I should kill you for those insults."

"You killed two of my people, snake. Don't push it."

Again the dry chuckle. "You might succeed, at that. My time since Ba'al has taught me a perspective most System Lords never gain."

Right. Carter suddenly made her mind up. "This might be the stupidest thing I do yet," she said aloud. "You've got naquadah detectors, right? You have to, because I know you came here because you knew about the mines."

"Of course we do." Tanit was contemptuous.

"We found a Universal Constructor. I don't know what you call it in your language."

"If I understand you, a Tal'shak. The full name is tal'shak'niya kelom'mik'n'dala — means 'very useful thing we haven't figured out how to build yet.'"

Carter chuckled herself. "That's just stupid enough for me to believe you're telling the truth."

"I don't believe you, however. Why did we not detect it?"

"Just call it another little trick the Tauri have learned," Carter said. "Here's the deal. Leave the gate. When we've seen you have withdrawn, I'll have the Tal'shak uncovered; you will be able to detect it and take possession of it."

"Tauri, do you know what I could do with such a weapon?"

"I'm willing to say I have an inkling. Tanit, my people have a saying; 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'"

"That sounds wise."

"It's asinine. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. Nothing more, nothing less. But as you can imagine, the Tauri have more than enough enemies right now. It works in our favor if they have something else to keep them occupied for a while."

"Now _that_ is thinking. If it weren't for your soft-heartedness and general stupidity, you might one day grow into a decent System Lord."

Carter laughed shortly. "Thanks, I guess. Now get this; we aren't friends, and I'd come gunning for you myself if we both didn't have too much to lose. And if you double-cross me, you should damn well know the Tauri won't rest until I'm avenged, and you haven't seen even half the tricks we can do. But I'll give you this; you are one smart, tough, cast-iron bitch of a Goa'uld, and I kinda wish I could be there to see it when the fox gets loose in the henhouse."

* * *

SGC, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

O'Neill, yawning furiously — and rubbing a spot on his arm for no reason Sam could see — made it back in time to greet her at the gate. The survey team was with her, and had even risked making the detour to grab some of their logs and samples. Doctor Frasier was waiting on the ramp and went to the injured Airman, stretcher team behind her.

The Colonel ducked out of her way, shuddering and rubbing his arm again. "Carter!" he said with a big smile. "Your first command. How did it go?"

"It's going to be a hell of debrief, Sir," she told him honestly.

"Yes, what's this I hear about you giving technology to the Goa'uld?" General Hammond asked. "Welcome home, Carter," he added.

"To _a_ Goa'uld," Sam said. "Like I said, Sirs, it's going to be an interesting debrief."

"Carter, look at me." The Colonel waited until she did. "Carter, you brought your people home. You were dropped in it, and you pulled it off."

"Yes, you did," Hammond said. "Major?" He paused to give it impact. "Good job."

O'Neill, as usual, was the last one off the ramp. The titanium iris had closed, and with a whooshing sound the light of the gate cut off as well as the wormhole was severed. "Yeah, good job," he said, "Rice Pudding."


	16. Chapter 16: Betrayed

So Carter finally got a chance to shine a little. I'm sorry to say, the "mooning over O'Neill" is canonical — but the writers handled it better after the first season or two.

In re modern Germany: words of the characters in this fiction are not necessarily the words I would use. Lara is not in her happy place (and it's going to get worse). That said, I met a Berliner or two who I think might agree with some of her sentiments.

Thanks you everyone who let me know they've read and perhaps even enjoyed. I don't know whether to apologize more to the ones I didn't reply to, the ones I replied to off-line, or the ones I replied to in the comments. In any case, please keep the comments coming - it keeps me motivated.

* * *

Berlin, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 52°31′N 13°23′E

* * *

The city had changed since she had last visited. With every year, the line that had once divided East Berlin from West Berlin, NATO and the democracies from the Soviet Union, became harder to see.

It was still heavily built up in Mitte, with a noticeable concentration of fancy buildings where they faced each other across Alexanderplatz; remnants of when each competing politico-economic theory struggled to outshine the other in the showmanship of their architecture, each presenting a Potemkin Village-like facade for the citizens of the other to envy.

But _unter den linden_ was still the stately same, the low old buildings with tasteful classic lines, and of course the shade of the wide canopies of the trees. And relatively quiet; at least up until one got to Brandenburgur tor and the gaggling crowds of tourists lining up to be "stamped through" a mock-up Checkpoint Charlie by an over-acting man with a thick East German accent.

The city was thriving. Ever proud of the its scientific and technological accomplishment, ever the cosmopolitan melting pot of Germany, the city worked its busy architects and entrepreneurs and artists around the clock to erase the remaining remnants of the line that had once divided it. But when you got out of the city center, that line was still there. It was there in the rows of miserable Eastern Block housing that still stood, it was there in the poverty of neighborhoods on the historical wrong side of the line, it was there in the faces of those who had grown up outside of the easy comforts and the alluring commerciality of one of the shiniest democracies outside of Japan.

Museum Island: perhaps it had always been grand and slightly soul-less. For all the modern and experimental art museums in it, all the earnest young students in their colorful and just so slightly generic "rebellious" clothing, Lara could not help but feel there was a softer social pressure still at work. One that didn't come in black Stasi cars in the middle of the night, but one that impressed a certain degree of conformity nevertheless.

But then, she felt that way in most of the democracies. Somehow they couldn't help confusing the freedom to buy with the freedom to think.

She caught her reflection in a broad glass facade. Black jeans, black crop shirt, jeans jacket, dark glasses. _Seriously, Lara?_ she addressed her reflection. _You look like you should be going out for a date with a vampire._ Or pick the urban fantasy romance of your choice.

The Altes Museum with it's Parthenon-like neoclassical facade had so far escaped the rabid reconstructions — the Greek antiquities were still on the ground floor - and they hadn't started yet on the Pergamon. Lara had decidedly mixed feelings about the reconstructed Istar Gate and of course the eponymous Pergamon Altar which were the massive centerpieces of their collection. She preferred her ancient architecture in its natural settings. But this way, people who were without the personal or financial resources for the kind of explorations she did could catch at least some sense of what it felt like to stroll within those ancient monuments. The exhibits were certainly spectacular, she gave them that. It wasn't often you saw an entire Greek temple _inside_ another building.

Neues was closed for the massive remodeling, as was Bode. By the end of the decade Nefertiti would finally be back (assuming Zahi Hawass continued to not get his way) but the Egyptian Courtyard was long gone, the last relic of a previous era of museum design vanished from a combination of Allied bombs and Communist neglect. And with a lot of luck, the long-laid plans for the Cube — Berlin's own Platonic Solid, even more over-scale and out of place than the I.M. Pei addition to the Louvre — would collapse in the present funding woes.

At the moment ticketing and, yes, even bathrooms were being provided with cheap and ugly temporary structures, which Lara thought said something deeply symbolic about Berlin. If she could only figure out what that something might be. Mitte, after all, had the intriguing only-in-Berlin solution to ongoing drainage woes; they ran large cast-iron pipes right up out of the ground and across the streets, and then painted them up in bright cheerful colors.

A sort of book fair and food court had sprung up under awnings in the space where The Cube was going to be built. There is one thing Lara had to give Berliners; they weren't stuffy about their museums. There was enough amber in the picture to give it the feel of a beer garden, but that was just Germans — beer was their equivalent of water, and if you really wanted water, they'd hand you a seltzer.

The interesting question was why Carlos was here. Okay, he knew better than to come out into the open in the States; he had to know the NID would be very interested in finding out how he knew the Stargate was hidden under Cheyenne Mountain. But a book signing?

Or perhaps the question was why the Berliners would bother with _him_. She could see his table now. He was in the _de rigueur_ explorer chic; chambray shirt, khaki jeans, a carefully distressed vintage leather jacket thrown across the back of his chair and even a bandana knotted about his throat like he was Allan Grant.

_What kind of archaeologist goes around fighting dinosaurs? _ Lara snickered to herself. Oh, wait. Bad example.

The signing seemed, oddly enough, quite popular. There were a number of young women in the crowd, with an expression in their eyes that made Lara wonder for a moment if a better title for his first book would have been "Magical Me."

There were a lot of boisterously athletic young men, too, peppered with several of a certain kind of stereotypical young academic; studious to a fault, literal to an excess, far too ready to find an interest and run it up into full-blown obsession.

And quite a few older Germans as well. Way back when, someone had decided the Volk would make better soldiers if they got more exercise in their daily lives, and Germans still practiced a life-long fitness culture with a particular obsession for grueling hikes. Everywhere she had been, from Machu Picchu to K2, she'd found them there; a German couple who had to be in at least their fifties, striding up the steepest trail as if they were going down the street to the chemist's.

How could they not realize Carlos was a fake? He didn't have the degree, he didn't have the published papers. His preparation was sloppy and his fieldwork all but non-existent.

She looked at the earnest ones again and the shoe finally dropped. That was the clue. He wasn't selling archaeology. He was selling the dream. They knew he was a poseur, and they were applauding his ability to carry it off.

It was a compelling offer. Leave the stuffy schoolrooms and rote jobs and go adventuring. It was the same illusion Hollywood packaged up with million-dollar budgets and airbrushed, interchangeable stars; the illusion that ordinary common sense, the ability to speak English (very slowly and very loud), and the physical skills from the odd pick-up game of basketball were enough to let you fight Hovitos, outwit suspiciously well-educated villains (often with European accents), experience spectacular scenery and of course come home with the girl.

Well, perhaps she was being too hard on them. Carlos seemed genial enough, at least when playing to this audience, and she'd read enough from an advance copy to know it was mostly pretty decent advice on how to travel to what she considered were quite nice and not terribly over-exploited archaeological sites.

And, hell. It wasn't like she hadn't hunted a bit of publicity herself, once.

* * *

_I feel a strange disturbance in the force._ Wrong movie, but he was running out of "Raiders" quotes. At least they had Harrison Ford in common.

Actually, that wasn't entirely accurate. The naquadah in his blood was humming in resonance to what he felt in hers, but he'd _seen_ her working her way through the crowd towards him long before he'd felt it. Or rather, he'd seen the ripple of movement in the crowd as a path opened for her; even baseline humans could sense when there was an apex predator in their midst.

She'd been to Colorado. She'd been into the mountain. That meant this was nearly over. Carlos had waited patiently. The long game had ever been his, back from when he first put Brísingamen into motion.

And the waiting this time had been remarkably easy. He smiled at the young woman he was currently talking to. "No," he said, "the basking shark is actually pretty laid-back. We didn't worry about them much while we were diving off Tel Dor."

"Aren't you ever scared?" the young woman asked.

"Plenty of times," Carlos laughed. "Try struggling with a frozen regulator at the bottom of the Sea of Cortez. I still got that Clovis Point I was hoping for, though!"

The younger part of him had led him well. Excitement, money, and just enough fame (or notoriety) as the extra spice. There was such a fascinating variety of cultures to explore, too; after all of this time, he continued to be surprised by the variety and the sheer vitality of the species.

He considered he might even miss this life. He was in no hurry — but his people had been waiting long enough for him.

"Lara Croft!" he said, making it nice and loud. The woman grimaced, which was hypocritical of her. She'd played to the crowds once, too. Wrote the same popular books and articles about her adventures (although from what he gathered she censored them considerably, and later ones were made up whole-cloth by her ghost writers anyhow). And got herself on the cover of more than one glossy magazine. There had even been a fan magazine or two, although as far as he had been able to determine she never made a _sou_ off those. Pity she'd never gone in for a proper photoshoot, Carlos thought, remembering one iconic magazine cover of her in a silver wetsuit.

The tendons bunched in her Lara's forearms, and Carlos grinned back at her. He knew she would love to have a less public meeting: she didn't dare try anything here. He made a point of standing up, coming around his signing table to shake her hand. "When I heard you were in town, I could only hope you might stop by. It is such a pleasure to meet you again! Please, won't you stay for a little? I even saved a chair for you!"

She was gritting her teeth, but she did. _Very_ hypocritical. Because he could tell it still meant something to her. She'd enjoyed the accolades. She'd enjoyed the attention. "I should have brought some of your old books to Berlin," he said. "Wouldn't that be something? To be sharing a book-signing with Lara Croft herself?"

"Carlos." She was making an effort to be civil, and she succeeded well. It even sounded friendly to his ears, though not as relaxed as she had probably intended it. "I doubt these young students even remember me."

"Oh, you'd be surprised. You could have worn the old adventuring outfit though. I hear you still rock the turquoise top…and those shorts."

"Carlos!" she objected, but half-heartedly. He knew she wasn't vain, not in the ordinary way, but it still pleased her that she could get away with the outfits. "Get away" was a mislabel, though. She still had the form, and she would have it for a lot more years than she probably suspected.

She'd be a hell of a catch. In the old thinking, a good Queen. It wasn't just the body, or the incredible mind; even more than that, it was unquenchable spirit. Oh, sure; he could have her by snapping his fingers. Easier than he could have any of the simpering _frauleins_ he was flirting with at this signing. But the long chase didn't just count for empires; it was the only proper way to win a prize like this one, too.

It might be worth a try one day. But today, he had business.

"I hope you took a chance to admire the Ishtar Gate," he said. He didn't bother nodding his head towards the Pergamon. That was gilding the lily.

"Seen it," Lara said shortly. "Strangely, I seem to have run into several people who want to interview _you_ on the subject."

"Imagine that!" Carlos said brightly.

"Ancient Egypt is really rather more my style," Lara all but cut him off. "Specifically, Horus artifacts. Do you know I was recently in Prague?"

_Prague? _Carlos wondered. _What the hell is in Prague?_

He looked up, then, and saw her eyes. And realized he was on the verge of pushing her too hard. She hadn't come to Berlin to ask him about the Stargate. She'd come to ask him what he knew about the Tears of Horus.

Which means she knew as much as she felt she needed to about the Stargate. Which meant the Americans had almost certainly taken her into their confidence. Which meant this was going to work out even better than he could have hoped.

"Oh, I look forward to admiring the Ishtar Gate at close range," he said then. And then he added the other words, the ones she would not remember after this conversation.

After that, he steered her enquiries as deftly as he could. She'd learned something about the Tears, all right. She didn't know enough yet, though. Nor did she seem to know about the so-called System Lords — although it gave him a bit of a twinge when she reacted to his carefully off-hand use of the good Arabic word "Ghül." The extent of her knowledge was definitely getting dangerous. It was good he would be wrapping this up soon.

"It's really you? The real Lara Croft?" One of the book signers had approached her.

"It's all real," Lara said without the slightest irony. They remembered her, all right. And she seemed to enjoy interacting with them — in fact, when she relaxed into it, she seemed to be getting almost as much of a kick as he had been.

"That jade necklace of yours, so lovely!" a young woman gushed. "I'd love to have one just like it. My family all watch Zahi's show with great enjoyment. I was so excited to see you on it!"

"Weren't there some legal problems in Japan?" It was one of the serious young men. "Weapons charges, property damage, a stolen motorcycle?"

"The Japanese authorities cleared me of all charges," Lara said. "Except for the bike. I took full responsibility and the owner settled out of court." As Carlos had heard it, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police had privately thanked her for dealing with the Yakuza _oyabun_ Takamoto Shogo, then strongly recommended she get out of the country — and not come back for at least a year or two.

"What was all this?" several people wanted to know.

Carlos laughed. "Perhaps you will read about it in her next book. What about it, Lara Croft; isn't it time to let your public see the legend is still alive?"

Lara was about to say something cutting, Carlos could see. But another young woman had stopped by the table. "Miss Croft," she said shyly, "I, um…I'm in the graduate program at Freie Universität. I got into archaeology because of you."

And even the Tomb Raider didn't know what to say to that.

* * *

Abbingdon Estate, Surrey, England: 51.15°N 0.25°W

* * *

"Tea, sirs?"

"Winston, seriously, man," Zip cut across Alister's quiet thanks. "Put your feet up, relax a little. There's nobody here but us chickens."

"The sentiment is well-meant," the old servant said dryly, "but I have my duties."

Zip wasn't going to let it go quite so easily, however. "I'm not saying the cat's away, I'm just saying you don't have to do all that butler stuff when there's nobody to impress but us."

"Indeed? I believe I will start dinner regardless. Sentiments and stomachs are not always in agreement."

"Oh, he's witty," Zip said after Winston had left. "Isn't he witty?" He sobered. "Something happened, last time she was home."

"As much as anywhere is home to our employer," Alister said. He wasn't disagreeing, though.

"She's keeping a lot to her chest. Not the first time, either. Winston knows something about it, but he's not talking either."

"So how was Berlin?" Alister made an obvious attempt to change the subject.

The lanky technical genius gave a look to his equally slim but rather less muscular friend. It went without comment by now that, once again, the book-loving academic had migrated down to Zip's cave full of electronics and tucked up in what should have looked like discomfort on one of the few chairs tucked in haphazardly between monitors and displays and server racks full of softly blinking lights. Or that Winston found himself down here with tea a little more often than was strictly necessary. The Abbingdon Estate was lovely, but it was a bit too large without the forceful personality of the current Countess filling it.

"This is a bad one," Zip said then. "I can feel it. She's never been like this." He paused, unwilling to say what he was about to say. "She scares me."

"She's starting to scare _me_," Alister met honesty with honesty.

"Only now?" Zip snorted. "You should have noticed how dangerous she is a long time ago. You only have to know how to look."

"Berlin." Alister was firm. It was left unsaid that, in his opinion, this was not how you should go around talking about your employer.

"She met with him," Zip answered now. "That smuggler guy. He's out playing Young Indiana Jones, all right. Good crowd at his book signing. They had quite a conversation. Short, but serious."

"Going to share it?"

"Going to send it to her after I've run it through the filters. I was almost too far for the parabolic mic, and I had my longest telephoto, too. I need to run a few dozen noise reduction and image stabilization algorithms across it."

"And you claim you don't speak any languages but English."

"Wake up and smell the smart drink, Alister. The 20th century would love to have you."

"I suspect I will have plenty to keep me occupied when our employer sends her next research topic in. She didn't give you any details about what she found in Colorado when she spoke to you, did she?"

Zip snorted. "Of course not. Come on," he stood up, "we've been sitting around too long. They put some easy climbs in just for us."

"Enjoy yourself, Zip. Try not to fall on your head."

"Aw, come on! You need to get out once in a while. Hey…how about we get Winston out of the kitchen and finally get you that first lesson at the shooting range?"

"Not my style, sorry."

"Alister." Zip's voice was serious. "You stay in this line of work, some time you are going to need it. I'm talking to you as a friend here, bro."

"Fine." Alister closed his book with a snap. "If it will keep you two quiet. Let's get this over with."

* * *

SGC, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

And now she was back in the mess. The place was starting to feel quite homely. It might be a military mess, but it had that flavor of the cafeterias at certain universities; nothing to look at itself (certainly nothing on the fancy dining halls of Cambridge), but on the napkins would be scrawled diagrams of new supercomputers and other breakthroughs in the physical sciences, and the conversations would be strange and heady.

Academics, Lara had long since decided, were the same species regardless of what part of the globe they were found in. Unlike Darwin's finches, they weren't segregated by geography; they only adapted to the specific ecological niches of their particular scientific specialties.

"Do you mind if I join you?" The young officer looked extra harried today, her blond hair in even less order than the last time.

"It would be a pleasure, Major."

Samantha Carter sighed as she sat. "You in the doghouse too?" she asked.

"Should I be?" Lara asked.

"I've been hearing a little about your Prague expedition. It wasn't at all what they were expecting and you brought back Daniel with an injury. Again. I mean, he always seems to be getting injured on off-world expeditions."

"I'm not entirely surprised," Lara said dryly.

"And then you went off on your own to talk to that guy the NID has been searching for. The one that knows more than he should about the Stargate."

Lara shook her head ruefully. "I don't think the NID is very happy with me right now," she said. _They would be even less happy if they knew I'd confirmed to Carlos that the Stargate was here, under the mountain,_ she thought guiltily. It wasn't as if that knowledge was going to do him much good, though.

"They are a lot less happy with me," Carter said unhappily.

Lara sensed Carter was feeling she'd let a lot of people down. "Want to talk about it?" she asked. She'd heard the gist of Carter's adventures while they had been in Prague, but none of the important details.

"I'm not violating security telling you any of this," Carter said as if she needed to reassure herself of that. "Basically, I had a chance to grab a key piece of Goa'uld technology. It might have put us years ahead in understanding their science. The NID — the NID feels it would have been worth the sacrifice."

"As I hear it, General Hammond disagrees," Lara said firmly. "There will be another find. The people you had out there would be a lot harder to replace." She didn't mention — because she knew by now that Carter was incapable of fully believing it — that the young officer was the most valuable of them all. Whatever gadget the Goa'uld had had, they could find another one. They would never find another Carter.

Carter unbent a little over lunch, and managed to explain a little of why she'd chosen not to press her advantage on the lone Goa'uld, but had let her go to fight another day. Lara's mind flashed immediately to Amanda. She'd made the same choice herself. At least she had their former friendship to stay her hand. But she was no more sure than Carter was that that choice to spare her enemy might not come back to haunt her one day.

And, yes. Left unsaid was that both of them may have felt more affinity with their respective enemies than they should, because their their experience was shaped by, and their fields so often dominated by, gender and expected gender roles. Just as Carter seemed able to unbend to Lara — who was in addition a stranger to the SGC and outside her chain of command — in certain ways and about certain matters in a way she might not be able to with her male team mates.

And for that matter…Lara gave a certain inward chuckle at the way some of those men had reacted to the name Hathor. Perhaps this was also a subject that might be more easily discussed between girls.

"I have so much to learn," she said first. "These System Lords I've heard people speaking of. What are those?"

"It's a term for the most powerful Goa'uld," Carter said simply. "All Goa'uld are constantly striving for more power. Usually against each other. They're a very Eddorian culture. The System Lords are at the top of the heap. Extremely powerful, ruling many lesser Goa'uld, with reigns lasting many centuries. Ra was one. Apophis is the one giving us the most trouble at the moment. They passed themselves off as gods to early Earth cultures."

"And there's one of the places where you people lose me," Lara said. "Earth must have been a crowded place by the way you people tell it. All of these powerful rulers of multiple planets all hanging out here, soaking in the worship of a mere million or so primitives? Hard to believe."

"Ra controlled access to Earth," Carter argued. "We think the other System Lords were merely occasional visitors."

"Oh, and Eddorian?"

Carter winced. "My inner nerd is showing again. It's a reference to one of the two opposed cultural philosophies of the Lensemen novels. Early science fiction space opera."

"Advance by assassination, all of that? Basically, Klingons?"

Carter grinned openly at that. "You speak fluent nerd yourself, Lady Croft. That one of your twenty-three languages?"

"Only eighteen," Lara said with a smile. "The books exaggerate. And Klingon is not one of them. So what about Hathor?" She'd let the "Lady Croft" go for now. She suspected it was going to take a lot more work to get the Air Force officer to let down her hair.

Carter grimaced. "Fertility goddess, as you know. May have also been worshipped as Aphrodite and Ishtar. She ran afoul of someone, probably Ra, and was imprisoned in suspended animation in Mexico."

"Wait..Mexico?"

"Pre-Mayan temple. Doctor Jackson could tell you more. In any case, she found her way here, took over the base, and made a pretty good start on taking over Earth."

"How?"

"Mental influence." Carter blushed, now. "She was able to influence the minds of…well, men."

Lara snickered. "I begin to see why the Colonel doesn't like to talk about this."

"Doctor Frasier and I figured out what was going on," Carter said. "I, um…I hit General Hammond."

"Good for you."

"No! I mean, he was under Hathor's control at the time. Basically, a lot of people here would like to forget that whole incident ever happened."

"Not your Doctor Frasier," Lara observed. "I gather she's working on seeing it never happens again."

This was something that already chilled her about the Goa'uld. Possession. Loss of autonomy. Loss of self. Adding mind control — even if it was apparently only effective on the male of the species — was just frosting on that already unpalatable cake.

"Really, Daniel could tell you a lot more about the Goa'uld and their history," Carter told her. "My specialty is wormhole physics." She brightened. "We're having a 'just us' briefing in twenty minutes. General Hammond was called away for an urgent meeting. I'm sure the others wouldn't mind at all if you wanted to sit in."

"I might just do that," Lara said.

"Before we leave here, though, I do have one question." Carter was suddenly intent.

Lara had already stood from the table. "Yes?"

The other woman leaned in, with a wicked grin. "Where _did_ you find those bitchin' boots?"

Lara laughed out loud. "They were custom made by Terry De Havilland, Chelsea fashion king of the 70's. Give me your measurements and I'll order a pair for you."

* * *

"I recognize that one."

"You do?" Daniel blinked. Colonel O'Neill was pointing at the symbol Daniel had up on the briefing room monitor; an isosceles triangle with the upper point occluded by a thick horizontal line, with a circle surmounting that.

"Yeah — it's the Pharaoh Lae Diz Rüm," O'Neill said. "Only made that mistake once," he added.

"Jack," Daniel said a little impatiently, "This is the symbol of Tanit, a goddess of Carthaginia. Also worshipped in Roman Carthage under the name Caelestis." Another image popped up; Daniel waved vaguely in that direction. "Punic coin, minted in Carthage somewhere around 200 BC."

"Or about 2,800 years after Ra was kicked off the planet and the Stargate buried," Lara couldn't resist pointing out.

Daniel would not be distracted so easily. "Tanit was a virgin goddess of war, much like Artemis, but there are unhappy rumors of child sacrifice in her worship as well. As a war goddess, she is depicted with a lion's head. She was also mother goddess, nurse, and a goddess of fertility."

"Which isn't saying much. Female gods are _always_ given fertility as an attribute. It's like giving D-cups to comic book super heroines. They all have to have them."

Carter burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. Lara Croft was rather more outspoken then she had ever dared to be about a certain blindness the others sometimes had. Made all the funnier — with she suspected even more of an impact on the male members of the team — because her friend shared that "most common super power." Not that she had anything on Power Girl, mind you. Physique _or_ lack of fashion sense.

Lara was still talking. "I recognize that mythology is a source we have open to us to theorize about the behavior and power relationships of certain Goa'uld, but I really don't see much connection between what the Berber peoples of North Africa ascribed to their god three thousand years after they'd last seen a living Goa'uld, and what some minor warlord has been getting up to on some extra-solar planet."

That stopped Daniel. Carter could see him seriously thinking. That was one of the things Carter liked about him; his willingness to adapt, to respond to challenges not with stubbornness but with an honest openness to new ideas.

"It is fairly clear that Goa'uld visited long after Ra left," Daniel said at last. "We've met peoples who obviously derived from cultures that can not be dated any earlier than the 8th century. The Cimmerians we could perhaps blame on the Asgard, but the Shavadai have cultural trappings that did not evolve on Earth until nearly 900 AD."

"Don't talk to me about the Shavadai," Carter muttered. The treatment she had gotten from her own team during the earlier parts of that incident had rankled, although the Colonel redeemed himself at the end when he'd trusted her to earn her own respect with the edge of a fighting knife.

"My understanding is Ra was a little obsessed on the subject of Earth. He refused to return, but he also didn't permit other Goa'uld to interfere."

"Sort of the 'I'll take my ball and go home' approach," Colonel O'Neill said.

"But the other System Lords couldn't resist the lure of human hosts and slaves. So they visited anyways. Thus we get the various legends of one order of gods being overthrown by another; Nut and Geb being supplanted by the sons and daughters of Ra like Isis and Osiris, Cronus and the other Titans being supplanted by Zeus and the Olympians — the same patterns occur in cultures across the globe."

Lara was about to say something to that, but Daniel added, almost parenthetically, "And it wasn't as if burying the Stargate slowed them down."

"Okay," Lara said to this. "I'll bite."

Daniel blinked. "They have spaceships."

"That's why the Stargate Program," Colonel O'Neill drawled. "Once the Goa'uld knew we were out and about, there was no point in shutting down the Stargate and trying to hide. We needed to make contact with others, people that could help us defend ourselves against the Goa'uld, and fast. Before their ships arrived."

"Spaceships," Lara said. "I remember, Doctor Jackson. Just before you went silent, you had been trying to publish your theory that the pyramids of the Giza plateau were intended for spaceships to land on."

"It's the truth," Colonel O'Neill said. "We've seen them do it."

"Actually, no," Carter spoke up at that moment, surprising the others.

"No?" Colonel O'Neill turned to her, doing the eyebrow thing again.

"No?" Daniel Jackson echoed.

"Actually, they're cake tins," Carter said straight-faced. Then she grinned. "We figured it out when we got back from Moria. Professor Doyle came up with the original idea. We had Doctor Felger run the math on it. Basically, much of a Ha'tak is extruded, using a similar technology to that Tal'shak we found on Moria. The pyramid is there as a scaffold during the process. When it is finished, you have a hollow pyramidal spacecraft."

"Major Carter is correct," Teal'c spoke for the first time. "A single slave colony at the site of a rich naquadah deposit can support the construction of up to three Ha'taks simultaneously."

"Like we saw on Cimmeria," Colonel O'Neill pointed out. "Those little gray guys really came through on that one. No offense Teal'c, but a Goa'uld mothership's got nothing on an Asgard one."

"Okay, slow down," Lara said then. "Asgardians? Little grey guys? Do I take it you found some of those allies you were seeking?"

"Yeah," Colonel O'Neill said. "Mighty Thor himself. Except he's about yay tall," he held his hand up at about waist height, "and built like a bantam-weight. And looks like he walked out of a flying saucer. But don't let any of that fool you. The Asgard are tough customers. The Goa'uld won't be attacking Earth directly, not this year."

"Right." Lara spread her hands. "Flying saucer guys were passing themselves off as the Norse pantheon. And brain snakes were pretending to be Egyptian gods."

"They _were_ those gods, Lara," Daniel countered. "They were the original sources of those beliefs."

"Perhaps, but that was in 3,000 BC. Perhaps I need to underline this for the non-archaeologists here. Everything that popular culture remembers as Ancient Egypt is from the New Kingdom; the Boy King Tut, his father the Heretic King Akhenaten with his wife Nefertiti; all of this dates from 1,600 years after your alien Ra took his pyramid-shaped space ship and went home. And that's just Egypt, that's one of the oldest cultures we're discussing. Even the oral traditions that are eventually codified into the known books of major world religions, from the eddas to the Mabinogion to Kojiki, date from eras where these play-gods of yours had to keep a low profile less Ra come back out to smite them."

"You can't deny the truth behind those myths!" Daniel objected.

"I'm not," Lara said. "I'd be the last person to do that. I know probably better than anyone not in this room today just how much truth lies behind certain myths. But that doesn't mean the current form is a true description of the underlying reality. We make our own gods, Daniel. The gods of a culture change and evolve as the needs of that culture change and evolve."

Carter had wonder, then, if it was possible Daniel had the wrong end of the stick all along. Perhaps the Goa'uld had borrowed more from Egypt than Egypt had taken from them."We know the Goa'uld are borrowers," she said, unwilling to go further just yet. "They didn't create the Stargate network. But Tanit said something to me on Moria that I found very interesting."

"She said something about the Stargate?" Colonel O'Neill asked. "I don't remember that in your de-brief."

"No, sir. About the Tal'shak. She translated the full name for me. And the key phrase was 'that _we_ don't know how to build yet.' I suspect, sirs, that the Tal'shak is Ancient technology, and furthermore, it is something beyond Goa'uld ability to duplicate."

Teal'c was solemn. "If the false gods had any lack of ability, they would not of course reveal this to any of their slaves."

"That's for sure," Colonel O'Neill said.

There was quiet for a long moment as they all thought about these new ideas. The Colonel broke the silence. "So," he said. "Our little trip to Europe. What did we learn, exactly?"

"Well, I've only started translating the Voynich Manuscript," Daniel said. "It has been slow going reconstructing the lad Jacobi's made-up language. One thing that helped greatly in the early stages was been working out the phonemes via early Italian and Latin cognates, then pronouncing the resulting words aloud for Teal'c. Eventually I was able to construct a synthesis that…"

"Daniel?"

The linguist shook his head, annoyed. The Colonel did make a habit of cutting him off like that, Carter reflected. "I've been concentrating on the new books, working from the copies Doctor Rubešova provided. They look to give us several new insights to Goa'uld technology, as well as information about System Lord politics. The Goa'uld who attacked the boy had been trapped on Earth for several decades at least, but he shared the racial memory going back through many centuries of alliances and treaties between different Goa'uld."

"So how often does that happen?" Lara asked. "A Goa'uld on Earth that didn't just park a spaceship nearby?"

"Well, there was Hathor," Carter couldn't help mentioning — if only to see the others wince once again at her name.

"As I understand it, she came from Ra's era, but was held in some kind of suspended animation until the current day?"

"Yes," Daniel said tersely. "In a sarcophagus."

"I'm assuming you don't mean a stone box."

"No. More Goa'uld technology. Sarcophagi are healing devices. Individual Goa'uld can use them to extend the life of their host many thousands of years. Ra, for instance, was still in his first host…"

"…When we killed him," Colonel O'Neill finished for Daniel. "What Daniel didn't mention is they have side effects. Bad ones. Daniel got in trouble that way. He was starting to act more Goa'uld than a Goa'uld before we were able to snap him out of it."

"There's a theory that reliance on the sarcophagi has a lot to do with Goa'uld behavior," Carter said. "There is a certain amount of psychological damage after extended use."

"Seems like every healing art the Goa'uld practice has nasty side effects," Lara said darkly.

"Like that bronze-age man we found under Castle Houska," Daniel agreed, obviously happy to see the attention turned from him and his own flirtation with sarcophagus addiction. But Carter was looking towards Lara. The Golem of Prague was not what she'd meant, Carter sensed. But the woman wasn't sharing, not yet.

"In any case, Hathor was able to survive into the current day. When her sarcophagus was opened by Kleinhouse and Cole she revived almost instantly."

"And killed them, and went on to attack us here," Carter added. "Makes me wonder if anyone else from Ra's time is currently on Earth, biding their time in their own sarcophagus."

"There is another device the false gods sometimes used to imprison one who had displeased them," Teal'c added his own information. "They took the form of a small vessel, sealed and marked with a sculpted animal head. I believe later humans copied that form for their own needs."

"A canopic…Teal'c, you are describing a canopic jar. _Now_ you tell us?" Daniel was aggrieved. Canopic jars, Carter vaguely remembered, were part of the elaborate ceremony of Egyptian mummification. They'd contained the heart and other viscera removed from the corpse.

"A canopic…" Lara started to say. "Oh bloody hell!"

And then the alarms started.

* * *

More than once Lara had been forced to think on her feet. Usually, though, it was to avoid getting killed by a guardian sea serpent or falling to her death. This was puzzle solving at high speed. Assembling the long links of evidence, unravelling the tale the past had to tell.

The alarm was howling through Stargate Command. "Code Three!" came a voice over the PA. "Intruder in the facility!" O'Neill was already in motion, as was the giant Teal'c; both had the lighting-fast reactions of combat veterans. The others — and Lara — pressed close behind.

It was all coming together. The death of the young man Massouf "The Thoof" of Cairo had asked her to look into. The personality change in his buddy Carlos Mendez that night the two of them broke into the newly uncovered tomb in the Valley of Kings. Horus, an elder god and patron of Pharaohs who warred with Set, but in later ages was eclipsed by other gods. The canopic jar as a prison for a Goa'uld symbiote. The rapidity with which that symbiote could take over a human host as inferred in the account by Captain Giacomo Gagliardi, and the quick and ruthless action of Hathor to consolidate her position the instant she was woken from her own enforced slumber.

And what had she found in the almost barren second chamber of KV63, the place where Tawfik Yasser had met his end — possibly at the hands of his former friend? A Goa'uld hand weapon. A Horus cartouche.

And a single broken canopic jar.

The steel shutters were just finishing rolling up as they piled into the control room, on the second story overlooking the massive ring-shaped artifact Professor Langford had uncovered near the Giza Plateau in 1928. General Hammond was already there, as was an Air Force sergeant with wire-frame glasses and close-cropped hair.

The artifact was rotating. The inner ring, the one marked with the mysterious symbols, was the part in motion. Things happened, Lara knew from experience, when an artifact rotated. Often bad things. The room was vibrating, two different alarms were howling now, and smoke was coming from the very un-alien hardware holding the thing upright; hardware the Air Force had obviously installed.

"Shut it down," General Hammond ordered.

"Trying, sir," the sergeant said. "Something has taken over the dialing sequence."

Carter joined him at the console. "The computer isn't in the loop," she said tersely. "The gate is dialing itself."

There was a clank of sound, and a V-shaped piece of alien hardware slid briefly over the rotating ring, then returned. One of the seven trapezoidal decorations around the ring lit up from within. "Chevron three has locked!" the sergeant reported.

A single figure was standing on the concrete floor before the Giza artifact. He had the whole outfit now; brown Herbert Johnson fedora, well-used leather jacket, Alden boots. All he needed was the bullwhip.

"We have an intruder in the Embarkation Room," the sergeant keyed the desktop microphone. "Reaction teams to the Embarkation Room!"

"Blast doors are down all over the base!" someone else reported. "They can't move!"

"Who is that man?" General Hammond demanded.

"Gentlemen, meet Juan Carlos el Halcon," Lara said dryly. "The Falcon. More properly known as….Horus the Elder."

Carlos looked up towards the windows of the control room. He tipped his hat at his observers and gave them a jaunty grin.

"How did he get in here? And what is his plan?" General Hammond demanded to know.

"I'm afraid how he got in here might be my fault," Lara admitted guiltily. Before she could explain further, Carlos spoke.

"Is that the famed General Hammond I see up there?" Carlos said. "No plan, sir; I'm making this up as I go along."

Lara rolled her eyes at the quote. General Hammond's reaction was more practical. "Airman, close the iris."

There was a rather nasty scraping sound and several thick pieces of interlocking metal slid out from around the ring, closing off the space in the middle. "Chevron Seven engaged and locked!" the sergeant reported in a rising voice. "Iris closed, sir!"

Light flashed from behind the metal barrier. A rippling water-like light, bluish-white, filled the room, issuing from the rear of the Giza artifact.

"Now, that wasn't very nice," Carlos said. His voice changed. "You will not detain me longer," he continued in a deep, flanged voice, and his eyes flashed. Literally. They lit from within, glowing a cold yellow.

Lara had guessed right, but she'd put it together too late. Carlos was a Goa'uld. And he had used her to gain access to the Stargate.

General Hammond took the microphone. "Our technicians will have the doors opened momentarily," he told the intruder. "You can not escape this room. I advise you chose to cooperate."

"I think not," Carlos said. "Lara Croft, was that your sweet voice I heard earlier? Lara, dear, _would you kindly_ get that iris open for me?"

* * *

Walter Harriman was enjoying another exciting day at the office. It always gave him a little thrill to see the Stargate in operation. He did admittedly play it up a bit. He'd started calling out the chevrons in a more and more excited voice over the last year or two of Stargate operations, and so far nobody had ever asked him to dial it back a little. He switched back and forth from "engaged" to "locked" with an "encoded" thrown in every now and then in honor of the first technical group to get the thing running. He'd heard that various scientists and engineers were convinced there was a meaningful distinction, and were actively trying to puzzle out which was which.

And it was always fun having SG1 up in the control room. Things tended to happen when they were around. They were the premier team of all the exploratory teams sent through the Stargate, after all, but that still didn't explain why so many remarkable events seemed to occur in their presence.

And add to the fun a new visitor, the near-mythical Tomb Raider whose exploits he had followed for years, thumbing through faded fan magazines and reading and re-reading the books and articles written about her adventures.

Then the Goa'uld on the ramp below said something to her, and all of a sudden Walter was a little _too_ up close and personal with his hero.

Lara Croft struck like a snake, hitting him twice before he even realized her hands were in motion and pitching him bodily from his chair. He was yet in the first moments of falling when she stretched out, and slammed her hand on the control he'd so recently activated.

The protective titanium iris slid back again, and in another moment the Goa'uld had made good his escape through the Stargate.


	17. Omake II

"We do _not_ shoot the animals!" Cutter was angry, his Glasgow accent strong enough to be nearly impenetrable. "We're here to see they get back to their proper time. They haven't don't anything wrong. They are just following their instinct."

"Well, the instinct of that allosaurus was to have a Professor Nick Cutter snack," Lara said, holstering her twin pistols. The Anomaly was growing fainter, the glittering broken-glass rainbow now barely visible in the sunlight that dappled the glade.

"Actually, um," this was one of the two kids, "Saurophaganax. You can recognize it by the horizontal laminae at the bases of the dorsal neural spines…"

"That's enough from you, Fedora-boy," Lara snapped. And as the blond started to say something Lara turned to give her a withering stare in turn. "Don't you have to run out to Earl's Court for the Brit Awards or something?"

"People." Stephen came up then, visibly uncomfortable with the fighting. "We're done here. Back to the ARC."

Lara giggled. She couldn't help it. "I'm following handsome," she said. "I've always wanted to see the Ark again…"

* * *

"Unscheduled off-world activation!" the cry came. Far too late. The wormhole formed and an instant later the entire gate-room was filled with a tremendous crashing and banging as a tough-looking six-wheeled unibody vehicle came crashing through at extremely unsafe speed.

It smashed into the far wall, bounced back, nearly bringing down the ramp with it, and finally came to a stop in the middle of the floor. A moment later, the occupants — apparently uninjured despite all the vehicular gymnastics — had exited. They were a motley crew; some humanoid, some only sort of.

"Damn!" the tall, seemingly-human woman in red and black armor said. "Wrong address! Tali…!" she gestured urgently.

"Don't worry Shepard," the figure with her head hidden in a featureless dome said, her accent slight but entirely unfamiliar. A glowing tool materialized around one hand and as she pointed it back towards the Stargate it began to rotate again, dialing out.

Hammond keyed the mic. "Who _are_ you people?" he asked. "I demand you put down your weapons — and stop monkeying with our Stargate!"

The tall woman turned to look at him. She stood for a surprisingly long time, as if she was having trouble deciding what to say. Hammond had the odd feeling that the entire universe was willing to wait with her, wait until she made her selection…

* * *

Apophis glared, as haughty as only a System Lord could be. "You will bow down in the presence of your god!" he demanded, eyes flashing. Only a mad giggle answered him, from one of the creatures glimpsed moving in the shadows of the green-tinged, flickering light.

Only a child remained in the open, kneeling over a body — a body of a man freshly-killed, wearing a cracked and bloody mask in the shape of a bird. "Jaffa! Cree!" Apophis ordered his new First Prime forward, cursing again the loss of his best. "Bring me that child."

The child-creature screamed as the massive First Prime loomed over her in his Horus-headed armor. And then a cluster of lights in the shadows lit up red. And growled. And moved very quickly.

"Get him, Mister Bubbles!" the child screamed in delight as the walking tank charged the invading Goa'uld at full tilt…

* * *

Air Force Colonel "Jack" O'Neill was smiling as he came into General Hammond's office. "You're going to like this, General," he said. "You're also going to want to shut that door."

"I take it you learned something useful from Maybourne," the General said. He got up and shut the door. "I hope you leaned on him hard. Wait," he held up a hand. "Actually, I don't want to know."

Jack grinned. "You mean you do want to know, but you can't afford to know professionally."

The balding, stocky Texan snorted. He said nothing more, merely leaning back in his office chair. Jack's non-answer had been sufficiently informative. Harry Maybourne was no friend to either of them.

"So this is the story as I got it from Maybourne," Jack said. "It all starts with Sam." At Hammond's raised eyebrows he quickly added, "Not our Sam. Samantha Nishimura. College student. Would-be documentary film-maker. Was headed up I-95 out of Vegas to take some footage at Manzanar and somehow turned right instead of left, and about a state too early."

"Which would put her at Nellis?" Hammond asked.

"Earlier than that. Groom Lake. And I have to say this; the kid's got good instincts. She waltzed right into P3. You know; the underground base the NID moved all their 'Area 51' crap to after all the leaks."

"So what happened?" Hammond asked. "From what I heard through my own sources, it got violent. This film-maker of yours doesn't sound like the type, though."

"She isn't," Jack said. "She had a friend with her. An archaeologist, actually. Another college kid. Cute little thing, apparently — British-born, wore her hair in a pony-tail even."

"An archaeologist with a gun?"

"Not at first. The pair wasn't in too much danger with just the NID involved. They've got places to stash inconvenient witnesses, places a lot less public than Gitmo. But as you and I know so well, the NID is in the hip pocket of the Trust. And some slimeball in the Trust decided to use the film-maker girl to try an artifact they'd found. Mental engrams of some Ancient scientist or some such clap-trap. And that meant putting her friend somewhere a little more permanent."

"Good lord."

"Yeah, well the archaeologist got hold of the knife. Reading between the lines, someone was having too much fun. Even Maybourne didn't approve. So there was a scuffle and it ended with one dead NID man and one scared, desperate, and extremely pissed-off girl."

"Good for her!"

"It gets better, sir." Neither the NID nor the Trust were exactly high on either man's Friend's List, either. "They'd been holding Lara separately — Lara Croft, that's the archaeologist's name — with some of the more random artifacts from the NID's little unauthorized jaunts through the Stargate. Pottery, animal masks, furs…and a bow from some iron-age tribe on some nothing world. The NID got anxious when their killer didn't come back in a few hours and sent two more to investigate. She dropped both of them with the bow."

"With a _bow?_"

"Betcha. I had a friend back in special ops who used to bend my ear about it. Muskets didn't take over from the longbow because they were more powerful. They took over because they require less training. Anyhow. A light hunting bow might deliver no more energy than a modern 22 short, but it has a hell of a penetration. More than enough to take down a man. Especially if you are good enough to put an arrow in his throat."

"I wasn't asking for the history lesson." Despite the words, the General's attitude was genial. "Only for why she didn't take a pistol off one of her ex guards."

"Oh, she did," Jack smiled. This one had teeth in it. "Thing is, there's another thing a bow doesn't do. Which is make a lot of noise. General, she went out into that top-secret facility looking for her friend. And she made over a dozen silent kills — from ambush, with that bow — before they even realized she was loose."

"Damn." General Hammond was sincerely regretful. "I assume they eventually caught up with her. Pity — I was on the point of offering her a position on an SG team."

"Don't withdraw her application yet, General. They caught up with her all right. But it didn't go their way. The reports get very confused at that point, but one of the things I've gathered is that arming your people with live grenades for room-to-room fighting isn't a page from any rational playbook. More than once, according to Harry, she popped up and potted up some idiot who insisted on cooking a pineapple, and the resulting friendly fire took half his buddies with him."

The General shook his head. "And you bought this? One college student holding her own against trained NID agents? When did she even learn how to handle a gun?"

"Apparently she was raised _in absentia_ by a fellow named Conrad Roth — ex Royal Marine. Now I'm not saying this was some sort of Kid Commando. Just a girl with some basic survival training, good instincts, and a hell of a lot of determination. Sir, the NID are good at beating up UFO nuts and peaceful villagers off-world, but they've no idea how to conduct counter-guerrilla warfare."

"So she held her own."

"No, sir. She kicked their asses. You know P3 anyhow. Rambling, huge. Long tunnels going no-where, rooms full of empty crates and rusted machinery. DOE is never going to admit this was their top-secret back-up plan to Yucca Mountain, but in any case there's a lot of room to maneuver for someone who knows what she is doing. So she took the battle to them. Trawled them out, ambushed them in small groups. She got to her friend. Rescued her just in time."

"She got her friend out?"

"Well, you know we suspected the Trust had been compromised by the System Lords? Well, by that point she'd killed enough of their key people the Goa'uld masters were getting antsy, so they took things into their own hands. So, yeah — about when she and her friend thought they were out and clear the Goa'uld themselves showed up."

"The Goa'uld?" Hammond was already reaching for the phone. "Are you telling me we had a Threshold Incident — a major Goa'uld incursion — in _Nevada?_"

"_Had_, sir. Had."

"Jack, please tell me you are joking."

"No joke, sir. By the time all the dust was clear, over a hundred Jaffa, six Death Gliders, and an Al'kesh were gone. Oh, and they're gonna need a new System Lord; Sobek bought it. She emptied the magazines of a pair of H&amp;K 9mm's into him at point-blank range."

"I thought System Lords had personal shields."

"Apparently it's possible to wear one down if you chip away at it long enough."

"And carry hand devices."

"Apparently you can dodge those. I'm going to have to try that some time." Jack had taken enough hits from kara kesh for a couple of lifetimes.

"So where is she now?"

"Not sure. Maybourne was too busy running to find out, and I don't blame him much on this one. There was a whisper that she's gone after Moo."

"Mu?"

"Yeah, what I said. Daniel thinks it's another city-ship, like Atlantis. I don't get where cows come into it but whatever. The other whisper Maybourne had was that she apparently had a bug on about immortality. Wrote her thesis on immortality in mythology and fable."

"Why so serious, Jack?"

"Think about it, sir. Sarcophagi, healing devices, Ascension. And she's already practically unstoppable. Give her ten years, she could be running half this galaxy."

"Point." Hammond sat back, thoughtful. Then he smiled. Slowly. "Do you think we should warn the Goa'uld?"

* * *

Lara clambered out of the cold Atlantic and on to the jagged, unwelcoming rocks of the newly arisen island. It was old, unspeakably old. It had been underwater for many times longer than human history had lasted. And it smelled. Unbidden, words like "noisome" and "squamous" were coming to her mind as she looked out over the festering mounds of undersea life and grey dirty water that clotted the ancient ruins.

Not a lot of right angles there, she couldn't help noting. In fact, one could almost describe the surviving geometry as "non-Euclidean." And that's when she heard the whispers of chanting in some guttural, alien tongue coming from the center of the island…

* * *

Okay, right. Sorry the next chapter is taking so long. These sketches will have to hold you for a while. Pity, when you think on it; there are so many different ways the crossing-over of the Stargate and Tomb Raider universes could go, from Lara being the one to discover Abydos, to SG1 going up against what they think is a Goa'uld on Earth; Jaqueline Natla.

For those who haven't packed all the available space in their skulls with random game and television trivia, the first sketch is classic Lara meets the crew from the British television show Primeval, second is SG1 meeting characters (and the indominable Mako) from the game Mass Effect, third is Apophis apparently still looking for good hosts and somehow managing to visit Rapture (from the original Bioshock), four is SG1 — or more specifically, some of the baddies from that continuity — running afoul of the gun-toting 2013 Tomb Raider (for whom this incident basically stands in for what happened on Yamatai), and last…well, if I have to explain that one, then I really haven't done my work properly, have I? (Although really she should do the same thing, from dark research at Miskatonic to troubling interviews with carp-eyed fishermen in Inverness…but I rather like her showing up at R'lyeh with really no idea what is about to spring out — like the sudden appearance of the famed T-rex in the very first game of them all.)

The next one will be along soon, I promise. Just taking a while both with new job, and figuring out all the places the conversation will go in Lara's upcoming interview with...Colonel Frank Simmons.


	18. Chapter 17: Aftershocks

Ancient Tools and Burials,

Plants and seeds, Neanderthals,

All these things (We make no apology),

Are the study of Archaeology.

But we don't do Dinosaurs…

(_The Archaeology Song_, Archaeosoup Productions)

More and more, I'm trying to stay honest to the real world instead of haring off into Ancient Astronauts and other archaeological pseudo-science. But that's making it harder and harder to stay within shouting distance of the _Stargate_ universe as presented in the original sources.

* * *

Gate Room, Stargate Command, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

The event horizon collapsed and the Stargate closed behind the thing that had called itself Juan Carlos "el" Halcon. The lightly-built airman was on the floor, holding his face, and the feet of armed Air Force security people were pounding up the metal stairway into the control room, and Lara Croft had nothing to say.

What could she say? A hundred brilliant reasons for her to have acted as she did formed in her mind, only to pop as they were revealed for the eggshell rationalizations they were. She shook her head as if trying to clear it. There could be only one explanation, and if she had been just a little brighter she would have seen it earlier.

"Doctor Frasier," she forced out. The first security had reached her, grabbed her unresisting arms. "Fraiser!" she said more urgently. "She needs to look at my blood. Call Doctor Frasier!"

There wasn't any point in saying more. The guilt on her face was enough, matched by the sorrow in the faces of those she'd began to think she could call friends. Traitor, or brain-washed slave, it hardly mattered. They couldn't trust her anymore.

* * *

Abbington Estate, Surrey, 51.15°N 0.25°W

* * *

"Alister, you need to see this. Winston, stay. This concerns you too." The young hacker was more serious than the others had ever seen him before.

"What have you got?"

"Here," Zip said as explanation. "The recording I took of her encounter in Berlin."

They watched, and even through the waves of digital distortion left over from the clean-up process they could see the moment when Lara stiffened. Her eyes took on an odd blankness as Carlos said something in a peculiar, sonorous tone. His actual words were light, and not phrased as a command, but you didn't need to paint a picture for these three.

"Hypnotic suggestion," Alister said as the realization became inescapable. "He wants her to return to that Crystal Mountain of yours and leave a back door open for him."

This changed everything. It made it necessary to consider the unthinkable. "We need to warn them," Zip said.

* * *

Guest Quarters, Stargate Command, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

The accommodations were better this time around. "Lara?" the young officer asked timidly as the burly airman outside opened the door for her.

Well, at least this had broken Major Carter of the "Lady Croft" thing, Lara thought. "Where else would I be?" she said, unable to hide a certain bitterness. "So." She didn't even wait for the officer to enter the small and impersonal but otherwise comfortable little room. "Have they sent a team out yet?"

"I'm sorry," Carter shook her head. "I know you wanted to chase after Carlos. We all did, Lara. But you can't catch someone that way, not in the Stargate system. He would have been at least a jump ahead before we could even send a MALP."

"You should have let me go alone," Lara said tiredly. "I was willing to take the chance."

Samantha Carter just shrugged. It had already been said. There was no point in arguing it over again. "I have more bad news for you," she said instead. "Doctor Frasier has completed her preliminary analysis. There are naquadah traces in your blood. Not enough to for me to se…to detect them remotely. And there are some very bizarre fragments of long-chain proteins. But if there's a mind-control drug imbedded in the mix, it is…well, Janet's words were 'fiendishly clever camouflage.'"

Carter was looking at her openly; her politeness was a kind that went beyond the subterfuge of pretending she wasn't looking to see what Lara's reaction would be.

Lara was touched. "I still don't know if I feel any different," she replied to the unsaid question. "I've been aware for several months now, ever since Winston admitted slipping the Horus Draught to me since I was a teen." She had no real baseline to know if it was her own personality, or the same dark side to Goa'uld rejuvenation technologies that Daniel had been snared by that was causing her to react in anger and even in arrogance more often than not.

Not that it excused anything. Part of being human was making a moral choice to over-ride one's baser instincts, and that still held even if those impulses were chemically driven.

"I know what Carlos is, now," she said then. "Now that I know the hooks he has in me…well, I think I could resist him."

"Good." Carter's answer was as non-committal as you could get. She respected that Lara would try, that was about it.

"Thing is," Lara said. She stopped. She stood up suddenly, walked across to the beside table, perched on that instead. "What I mean is," she tried again, "is he didn't just escape Earth. He's got a destination in mind. I'm sure of it. This was only one part of his plan."

"What do you mean?" Carter was curious.

"I don't know!" Lara said, sharply enough to make Carter wince. "I'm sorry," she said immediately.

Carter only nodded in sympathy. But she didn't really understand. Lara was being a guest of the SCG by choice. She was choosing to cooperate. What was tearing her up was being unable to see a clear path to proceed. Being unable to put the pieces together in any useful way.

"Walter is fine," Carter said then.

"Who?"

"Sergeant Harriman," Carter amplified. "The guy you hit." A small grin found her. "Actually, he's wearing it as a badge of honor. Apparently he's one of your old fans. He wasn't badly hurt," she added. "Just a little sore."

"A little…..sore," Lara said slowly.

"Yes, that's what I…"

"But then, why would he be mighty sore? I wasn't myself."

"Lara?" Carter was bemused.

"Sam," Lara said. "Tell me about these Asgard of yours."

"Asgard? What brought that on?"

"I'll explain later," Lara said tersely. The warning inscription under the Tripolitan desert. The strange double-rebus Horus the Elder had spelled his name with in the hidden chamber beyond KV63.

"Well," the young officer paused, ran a hand through that blond mop of hair Lara was certain, once again, was a little on the wrong side of Air Force regs. "Daniel had the theory that for every group of gods representing evil — that is, death, night, disaster, whatever — there would be another set in opposition."

"Zorastorianism," Lara said. "A bit simplistic of a way to put it in most religions though. Persephone myths, Mayan blood-letting; all these are recognition of cycles of death and rebirth, winter and spring, the interdependency of light and darkness."

"Anyhow, Daniel believed that there must be a counterpoint to the Goa'uld; a pantheon of gods that would help humanity instead of enslaving us. That led him to the Asgard."

"And…whoah." Lara shook her head. "How's that supposed to work, anyhow? You guys lost the toss, you get to worship only evil gods? You can't lump a whole pantheon into those boxes."

"I don't think thats how Daniel meant it," Carter argued. "But I guess that is how it worked out. The Asgard are behind the Norse mythology, and they are protecting Earth and several other planets. Like Cimmeria, where we first made contact with them."

"Cimmeria!" Now Lara was laughing. "Cimmeria…oh, that woman!"

"Who?"

"Catherine Langford. I commented on her necklace. She told me it was from Cimmeria. Just like she told me she didn't _worship_ any gods — she damn well knew about the Goa'uld, though!"

"She's an amazing woman," Carter smiled. "If it wasn't for Catherine, we wouldn't be here. She worked tirelessly for forty years to get the government to investigate the Stargate properly. She brought Daniel on personally."

"He told me."

"So that's the Asgard," Carter finished. "Why did you bring them up?"

Lara explained briefly about the Horus/Hodur connection she had discovered. "I have a strong feeling they might know something," she said. "Well worth asking them."

"I'll pass it on," Carter said. She dithered for a moment, then stood. "Are you okay if I…"

"Go."

"Is there anything I can bring you?"

"I'm fine, Sam. Really." And Lara put enough into it that she almost managed to convince the other woman. If not, of course, herself.

* * *

It wasn't long before the next knock came. It was the bronze giant, Teal'c. He looked around deliberately, saying without words that he respected her choice to cooperate. And he, more than anyone else (except perhaps Jack O'Neill) understood it _was_ a choice.

"Sit, big guy," Lara patted the bed before standing, walking to the overstuffed chair, and sprawling in it. They'd let her keep civilian clothes this time around, and she was dressed casually in black jeans and a t-shirt — but boots with them; trainers were just a little _too_ casual for her.

The man sat. He was quiet, patient enough to wait until she raised an eyebrow at him.

"I understand," he said at last.

"I've been getting a lot of that," Lara replied acidly.

It didn't perturb the giant. "The Goa'uld are strong," he told her. "They rule over planets, cowing millions of worshippers into total obedience and abject terror in the belief that they are gods."

Lara had nothing to add to that.

"We are stronger," Teal'c took her hand, then. He pressed it firmly. "Their hold can be broken."

"You…" Lara looked him full in the face. She leaned forward, then, on to the edge of the chair. Daring, she reached out and traced with her fore-finger the sigil formed by ritual scarification on the big man's forehead. "You served a Goa'uld once, didn't you," she said matter-of-factly. "Apep, was it?"

"I was the First Prime of Apophis," the bronze giant told her. There was a world behind his words; a pride in the position and status he had reached that still deserved recognition, overlaid by the total and honest acceptance of the weight of guilt for all he had done while under that command.

"I was the captain of his personal bodyguard and the greatest of his warriors," the giant said. "I was at his right hand for many years."

"Which means you couldn't help but see his feet of clay," Lara said sourly.

"They are evil. Gods or not, such as he do not deserve our worship." He sat straighter at this, but did not move to escape her proximity. "One day I hope all Jaffa will realize that."

"Jaffa," Lara said. "I've heard that word before. There's something else in the equation, isn't there. Something else you haven't told me."

"Indeed." Teal'c smiled, impressed…but not surprised. He stood, then. He rolled up the edge of his shirt in a move so unself-conscious it didn't make for even a moment of awkwardness.

Perhaps because it was so obvious that all he meant to do was display the deep, raw-looking scars that criss-crossed his belly. "A pouch," he said. "A present from the false gods. Lady Croft, I carry within me a symbiote, a larval form of the Goa'uld. It uses my body to grow to maturity, and in return it gives me strength and resistance to disease."

Her voice was a little shaken, but she did not flinch away. "And that makes you Jaffa," she said.

Teal'c restored his shirt and sat again. "And one day we Jaffa will throw off the yoke of the false gods forever."

Gilgamesh, she couldn't help thinking at that moment. He was like one of the legendary heroes. She looked up at the giant with a new respect. She couldn't imagine the strength it had taken to rebel against his Goa'uld masters, and to begin the long journey to lead his people to freedom.

He seemed to understand what she was thinking. "I did not do it alone," he said genially. "I have my friends here to thank. My friends Daniel Jackson, Major Carter, and O'Neill. SG1."

* * *

"Colonel," Lara said. "I figured you'd be next." She'd heard of a tradition in some parts of America of bringing a casserole when you visited to cheer up a friend. She was glad that for whatever reason that rule was not in force here.

"I talked with Thor," Jack said without preamble.

"Anything useful?" Lara held on tight to the wave of rising hope.

"More like, confusing," the Colonel said.

Thor's hologram was flickering even more so than usual. He was on his flagship and quite distant. As well as somewhat distracted, Jack had sensed.

"O'Neill, you bring me…interesting…news," the little gray alien had said.

"You know this Horus guy, then?"

"He is an…unusual…Goa'uld. One who has gained the trust of the Asgard."

"He…_what_?"

"Yes, O'Neill. As I believe you know, not all Goa'uld are irretrievably evil. If this is the same Hodur that I knew of a long time ago, he may have done a great service to the Asgard people."

"What kind of service? I mean, what did he do?"

"It is not something we share lightly, O'Neill."

"A secret, then? What kind of secret?"

Thor sighed. "It has to do with biology." When Jack didn't appear enlightened by this, Thor added the qualifier, "_Asgard_ biology."

"As in," Jack said stupidly. "The biology of Asgard."

"Yes." Thor's voice was pained.

"Biology as in birds and…you know, that stuff."

"There is no 'that stuff.'" Thor said solemnly. His hologram image blinked slowly. "We have not reproduced in that fashion for thousands of years."

"Thousands of years? You haven't had any for…err, I mean…"

Thor blinked some more.

Jack quickly changed the subject. "So this Horus dude was helping you with your, um, problem."

Thor's next blink was very long. "Not in the way you appear to imagine," he said at last, his voice Sahara-dry. "He was working with several of our leading scientists, however, on a life extension project."

"Don't those have certain drawbacks? I mean, look at what almost happened to Daniel."

"This was a new approach."

"Well, that's great news for you guys," Jack said. "So there might be the pitter-patter of little gray feet in Thor's future, eh?"

"Perhaps." The Asgard's voice could be served on the rocks. "There was an accident."

"Lemme guess. An Asgard named Baldur was hurt."

Thor shook his head, and not in disagreement. "I continue to be surprised at how many things somehow find their way into Tau'ri legends and myths. It would almost make me believe in the fabled water-cooler."

"So you vouch for Horus, then?" Jack asked.

"I do not, personally. I am of a minority who have expressed strong reservations in Brísingamen. And, please, this is for your ears only. It would be politically unwise for me to say more at this time."

"And Horus?"

"Our people observed him after he returned to Earth," the little alien told him. "From all appearances he was what your people call 'the real deal.' He worked carefully against the remnants of Ra's control, and by all appearances for the betterment of your species. If there was ever a Goa'uld who was on the side of good, then Hodur qualified."

"But you still have reservations," Jack said shrewdly.

"Reservations I can not act upon without much better proof," the little alien said. And with that, their conversation ended.

"Well," Lara said as the Colonel's account concluded.

"Yeah, not exactly a slam-dunk," the Colonel said. "But it looks like you won't be staying here too much longer anyhow."

"Oh?"

"The NID has some questions. Oh, you've heard of them? Maybourne's sent an up-and-coming young Major out to interview you. Should arrive some time today; we'll let you know."

"What's this Major's name?" Lara asked.

"Simmons," Jack told her. "Frank Simmons."

He left, and left Lara with a lot to think on.

If only she could. Losing autonomy — finding herself the puppet of the Goa'uld she had been pursuing — was a hard shock to get over. She remembered how easily the rationalizations had come in the Gate Room — man was the rationalizing animal, after all — and that cast into doubt all her reasons, all of what she thought were her motivations, all that brought her to this point.

"I don't know that Carlos didn't whisper in my ear as far back as Cairo, when we met at that jumped-up burger shack," she said aloud. "I might have already been under his influence when I broke into NORAD."

The purpose of the Tears of Horus was clear, now. Longevity with a price tag. Based on what she knew now, it was obvious why Horus had made the draughts. It allowed him to give that extra little advantage to his chosen actors on the world stage, be they politicians or admirals. And give him a nice little back door in case he wanted to push them in a direction of his own choosing.

"The ultimate man behind the throne," she said. "But he was just one, and the Principle of Superposition says he was put out of action no later than the 19th Dynasty." Which was good; it kept one from being too tempted to indulge in the game of, "Which historical figures were the alien spies?"

This was all just hopeful chatter. Lara stood, and in a sudden angry gesture punched the back of the overstuffed chair. It didn't help. She'd been snookered, and it was her own pride and arrogance that made it possible. Carlos had beaten her. She'd been nothing but his catspaw all along. And now there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Because it wasn't over, not by a long shot. Jack O'Neill couldn't see it but to her it was crystal. The Tears were but a prototype. The real hat trick was Brísingamen. Under the guise of reviving the Asgard species from what (if she understood what Thor had been inferring) was an extinction in progress, Carlos, Horus, whatever his name was…

"You can't fault his ambition," she said aloud. "Like Sam said, it helps when your enemies have enemies to distract them. The Goa'uld are their own worst enemy, and only their constant warfare against each other has let everyone around them survive as long as they have. But Horus has his sights set a little higher."

She missed her chip recorder. She should have asked for a replacement to be sent up.

"But I'm stuck here, I've lost the trust of the best people to fight this thing, and I…"

And she didn't trust her own instincts anymore. Her own skills.

"I've let…" she started again. "I've let everyone down."

And with that, the strength went out of her. Her back bent from the straight, proud posture. She slumped, defeated, in the much-abused chair.

* * *

"Who are you and how did you get this number!"

"I'm Zip, Mister General Sir, and that's my job. I'm Lara's tech expert, I'm her hacker, I'm the inside guy, I'm the guy…well basically I'm her tin dog."

"Slow down and start making sense, young man, or I'm ending this call."

"We work for Lady Croft, Mister General. And there's something she needs to know. There's something you need to know. That Carlos dude did something to her. In Berlin. He's trying to get into the Stargate."

Hammond was silent for a long, hard thought. Then he sighed. "I am not confirming there is such a thing," he said with a false lightness. "But your warning was well meant and I thank you."

Unfortunately the young man at the other end of what should have been a private and un-tappable telephone line picked up the nuance. "It's too late," he said. "It's too late, Alister!" he apparently said to someone else in the room with him. "Look," he said then. "I've got a recording. Someone's got to see this. You got an FTP I could use?"

"This is a secure military facility, son," Hammond said, still as genially. "Our computers are not connected to the outside world."

"Shit, right. There a hard drop I could use? Hey, how about that Daniel character of yours? You let him off-post on weekends, right? He could go to a cyber cafe…"

Hammond chuckled. "Doctor Jackson may not be your best option for anything involving modern technology," he said. "I do have a young officer who I'm sure can figure out something for you, however."

What he left unsaid was that Major Samantha Carter was also the best tool he had for ensuring this self-proclaimed hacker would never get within shouting distance of a window into their secured systems…

* * *

The interview room they had set aside fit the mold perfectly. It was bare, excepting a single table and two chairs, and dark save for a single overhead light. Frank Simmons was there already, in full uniform with blue coat buttoned up, brown leather briefcase open on the table beside him. He was short, with dark eyes, curly hair and a wide, mobile mouth. He looked up at Lara's guard as if grudging the effort it took to acknowledge them.

They left, she sat. When the were alone, Simmons leaned forwards and steepled his hands. His examination had all the warmth of a bacteriologist studying a slide. "So," he said. "What made you decide to betray the human race?"

"What the hell? Who do you think I am?"

"Lara Croft, self-taught antiquarian, self-styled archaeologist. Parents deceased, heir to the Croft fortune and name. Oh, that's right. You are a Countess as well, although I believe there was some controversy about that. Sorry, you are on American soil now. We don't have royalty here."

"Unless they play ball games," Lara said bitingly. She did not thank the man for bringing up the rather ugly bit of struggle she'd gone through to hold on to her inheritance.

"You've had a checkered career," Simmons continued in the same tone, just this side of a sneer. "Surprising you haven't been arrested for antiquities smuggling before now. Just a few examples," he flicked a folder open, closed it again with but a cursory glance. "Waseda University wants their artifact back. I quote from the catalog entry; 'A blade fragment of fanciful design, black neptunite with pronounced benitoite veining. Provenance disputed, provisionally attributed to late neolithic.' Toyohiro Nishimoto of the National Museum of Japanese History made that complaint out."

"I didn't take it," Lara said.

"But you know where it is." Lara could only look guilty at that. It was true; she didn't take it in the first place — the _yakuza_ Shogo Takamoto had — but she could have seen to it that it was returned.

Simmons was continuing. "You removed an artifact from the Valley of Kings," he said.

"With permission from the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities," Lara snapped back.

"And no documentation of that transfer," Simmons countered. "I wonder how much longer Doctor Hawass will last in that position with behavior like that? Ah, and then there are numerous complaints against you from The Holy Monastery of St. Nicholas Anapausas for destroying an bronze armillary sphere from the 16th century."

"I did not! Well, I maybe dented it a little." She still wondered today how much the Greek Orthodox monks of Meteora had known of what was under their feet. But that probably didn't excuse using an irreplaceable artifact as an expedient counterweight.

"Yes, well you also 'dented a little' a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bolivia. You do remember Tiwanaku, don't you?"

Lara bit her lip. Now Major Simmons was going for blood. He continued; "Or does it fade into a confusion of similar scenes of collapsing shrines and flooding tombs and priceless artifacts missing or destroyed?" Simmons' voice softened here, playing good cop to his own bad cop. "Although you were only a teenager at the time, and blame should really be placed on the university that allowed untrained young people to work at an historic site. Nevertheless, it is at the very least suspicious that you were one of the few survivors of a disaster that cost the lives of more than one senior and accredited archaeologist…"

Lara couldn't speak. There was so much in his synopsis she would correct. For one thing, although it was from the same Pre-Columbian culture as Tiwanaku and the excavation was nominally under the umbrella of that same university program, the site he was thinking of was not even administered by the Department of Archaeology of Bolivia; it was eighty kilometers of hard road to the West and thus actually in Peru.

But that didn't matter. She was shaking, now. In her mind she could still see too clearly Amanda's terrified face as the rushing water closed over her head, hear her own screams as she struggled — and failed — to come to her best friend's aid. Guilt swamped her like that same wave of cold, relentless water that had flooded the dig.

More mistakes. More times she hadn't thought far enough, hadn't been careful enough, had been driven by arrogance and impatience…and other people had paid the price.

Simmons was relentless. "So much for your 'skills' as an archaeologist," he said. "So tell me about this Goa'uld you threw your lot in with. Claims to be Horus, does he? Pity we've already accounted for that particular System Lord."

Lara's head snapped up, her eyes fire. Tears were on her face, she realized, but she didn't care. "I"ll accept that sort of foolishness from Daniel," she said, "Because he has the balls to learn from his mistakes. Yes, there's more than one god named 'Horus!' Your precious System Lord is probably Horus the Younger. Confusing them is like confusing Sargon the Great with Sargon II of Assyria."

It was a lot more complicated than that, but even Daniel had trouble grasping the real point; that deities, especially Egyptian deities, were not fixed points. They morphed and combined as various aspects were highlighted or subsumed in others. Picking one name out of a hat and trying to assign a single set of attributes and relationships to it gave you a very confused picture with little connection to any historical worship.

"I would have said 'confusing Henry IV with Henry VIII but you've already expressed your feelings about the British nobility," she added.

"Despite your verbal tricks, we'll have to consider this particular Goa'uld unidentified for now," Simmons was dismissive. "To sum up, your 'archaeology' is mere grave-robbing. You don't have any papers, any credentials, any professional standing in the field. And the irreplaceable cultural heritage of a dozen nations have suffered from your attentions."

"You don't give a shit about cultural heritage, Simmons," Lara confronted him. "You represent the NID. All you care about is seeing that you Americans get all the toys."

"Yes, about that," Simmons said. Infuriatingly, he seemed to think she had played right into his hands. "Your interference with a matter of National Security puts the entire world at risk. Even backwaters like your United Kingdom."

"Interference!" Lara couldn't trust herself to say more.

"Shall we make a little list? Passing information about the Stargate program to a foreign party. Helping to block the collection of important strategic documents from an allied nation. Breaching physical security at Stargate Command itself (not to mention the North American Aerospace Defense Command) not once, but twice! And it is quite clear that you have spent a career blithely sharing sensitive information with every Tom, Dick and Harry you manage to bump into as you waltz around the world."

"Is that all?" Lara said coldly.

"I haven't even started!" Simmons said the last sharply, but he was, infuriatingly, still under complete control. He had that uncanny ability some people have to make everyone else at the table look like they were at fault. There passed over his face just the slightest, "Oh, give me the strength to put up with these fools," as he continued. "Try weapons charges for one. You even violated concealed carry here, in Colorado Springs — but for you, from what I hear, that was actually being subtle. How _do_ you manage to bring automatic weapons and explosives with you every time you travel?"

Lara didn't grace this with a reply.

"From the way you are glaring at me, it's a good thing you've been properly declawed. At least Hammond's people were able to get that right."

"Now wait just a minute…!"

"Loyalty, now?" Simmons rolled his eyes melodramatically now. "To the people you betrayed? Little late now, isn't it?"

"I, did, not, betray, anyone," Lara ground out. "I didn't have a choice."

"Oh, right, this mysterious mind control potion you've claimed. Well, if it's real, there's no sense tying up the attention of this base's senior physician searching for it. I don't denigrate the medical skills of Doctor Frasier, but the people I work for have more of the appropriate experience."

"You mean they're used to slipping phenobarbital to recalcitrant 'interview' subjects."

"Good, you agree with me on this as well; we are better equipped for this kind of investigation." He took in her expression, mimed an attitude of surprise. "Why, don't you want to be fully cleared of any wrong-doing? I would think you would see it is in your interest to work with us."

He spun his briefcase around, dropped the papers within, and snapped it closed with a surprisingly violent motion. Then he leaned over it, looking her hard in the eye. "Personally, I think you should be locked up. Your little fracas this morning is only the last in a long line of violent acts you've perpetuated. When you aren't breaking into monuments, you are breaking into offices. And when you aren't shooting local wildlife, you are shooting men. The only reason there aren't manslaughter charges against you in a dozen nations is because you don't leave any witnesses!"

Lara was crouched on the edge of her chair, her fingers digging into it. It was all she could do to keep from leaping at him. He saw the look in her eyes, and sneered back into it. She fought the red haze back. _He wants this_, she realized. _This whole conversation, he's been trying to get me to attack him physically._ Because then, she realized suddenly, he'd have justification for removing her from the custody of the SGC.

"James Rutland, the Senator's son," Simmons was saying. "Ring a bell? Or what about Pierre DuPont? You were the last to see him alive — draw your own conclusions. Not enough? Larson Conway. Not exactly a prize himself, but he was working private security when you walked up and shot him point-blank and watched him bleed to death on the dirty floor of that mine!"

Lara made a strangled sound. Larson. She'd hated herself. He'd dared her…he told her she didn't have it in her to kill him. He'd been wrong. _I'm not the woman you think I am,_ she said to herself. It was his eulogy. "I'm not the woman you think I am," she said it aloud, this time.

"Eh?" Simmons didn't know what to make of it. She was smiling, suddenly. But it wasn't a nice smile.

"Thank you," Lara Croft said. She stood, now, but it was with the easy, lanky grace of a lioness. "I was starting to doubt myself, but you reminded me of what is at stake."

"I don't understand…" Simmons, despite himself, pushed back in his chair. And suddenly Lara was in his face.

"NATLA IS ALIVE," she said.

"What do you, what are you…!"

"Natla," Lara said. "Lost Island blew up. I was the only person to escape. There's no way you could know what happened in those mines…unless Natla survived, too." She pulled back so suddenly it was as if she'd pushed him away. His mouth trembled. He fumbled at his briefcase.

"Natla's been feeding information to the NID," Lara said. "You poor fools. You babble to me about National Security. Natla is an _existential_ threat." She left the table, strode to the door, rapped sharply on it. "We're done in here," she called to the guards outside. Then she turned back to give Major Simmons a pitying look. "If Natla is out there…I'm the only one who can stop her. _Like I'm going to stop Horus._"

* * *

"Well, that's it," General Hammond sighed, putting down the phone. "The NID is here. She'll be transferred to one of their facilities under heavy guard."

"Sure thing," Jack O'Neill said.

"Colonel, that was flippant even for you," Hammond frowned. "Colonel…you didn't do something you shouldn't, did you?"

"Me, Sir?" Jack was all innocence. "I didn't do anything at all."

Lieutenant General George S. Hammond was way too experienced an officer for that to fly past him. Nor did he lack experience in dealing with a certain maverick Colonel. "Colonel," he said sharply, "Would that include posting extra guards on her quarters?"

Jack shrugged. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"You didn't think of, say, handcuffs?"

"Eww, Sir. I'm not into that."

General Hammond lifted up the phone. Looked at it. Put it down again. "There's no point in alerting security, is there," he said.

"Probably not, Sir."

"She'll be miles away by now."

"I would be if I were her, Sir."

"Colonel." General Hammond sighed. "You leave me with little alternative."

"I don't?"

"Colonel. Jack. I know you. I've worked with you. You've skirted regulations in the past, and with luck you will skirt them again. But this time you went too far. It was your sworn duty to see to the secure transfer of our prisoner to the NID. You may not like it. I don't like it myself. I damned well don't like it, if I might say so. But I have my orders. And you had your orders."

"Does this mean our date's off?" Jack said.

"Enough." Hammond was controlling his anger with difficulty, even if he understood and sympathized. "Colonel, you stand relieved of duty until further notice."

_That_ got through to Jack. But he took it like a man.

"Collect your things. Take some time off. Go fishing." Hammond said, not ungently.

"I…Sir!" Jack straightened, and for once gave a halfway decent salute.

* * *

Jack dropped in on Teal'c before he left. The massive Jaffa wasn't in meditation, but his quarters were darkened except for the ceremonial candles. "She's gone," Jack said. "She is gone, right?" he asked, suddenly worried.

"She is," the giant said solemnly. "She will return."

"So…you think she was on to something, don't you? Think maybe we should take a look at that Horus problem of hers ourselves? I'd hate for something bad to happen to the little gray guys."

"Indeed," Teal'c could only agree. "They are powerful allies."

"And they are friends," Jack said. "Like she is. Dammit, Jana was right. You were right. SG1 looks after their own, and at the moment that includes a maniac British archaeologist with a taste for big handguns."

"Did she indicate to you what her plans were?" Teal'c asked.

"I think she did." Jack scratched his head. "She said, if you are trying to uncover the crimes of a god, then who better to talk to than a heretic."

"Do you understand?" Teal'c was curious.

"Not a word," Jack said. "Come on. Let's get Daniel."


	19. Chapter 18: Cretan Bull

No, I'm not promising Natla. After the mess I made of depicting the NID man played by the inimitable John "Q" De Lancie, it's pretty clear the full impact of the Mad Atlantean would be beyond my skills.

The story has gotten complicated enough already. Just take it the woman has a backstory (as does SG1), and if you really want to know why, say, the monks of Meteora are upset with her then play the game.

After all, the past is always glimpsed in tantalizing fragments. Archaeology is nothing if not poking through the debris and trying to figure out the story behind it.

* * *

The Aegean, 36°25′N 25°26′E, ca 1642 BCE

* * *

_This is the way legends pass._

_Areatha had heard the tales told so many times over the years they were more vivid in her memory than the truth; as if these depictions were a closer approximation of what really happened. Perhaps in a way they were. People needed their legends, people needed a way they could emotionally relate to the world. People needed their heroes._

_In the legend, in a false image she could already bring to memory as if it was original, she had first met him in the great stone antechamber of the Asterion, where he stood among the tribute of fourteen youths male and female._

_This end of the "garden isle" was much different from the thriving city of Akrotiri. Not for this place was the sprawling palace complex around the sunny agora, wooden-roofed rooms open to the sun and air and decorated with frescoes of dolphins and lillies._

_The black-sailed ship had came into the protected harbor through the thin slot between Aspronisi and Thera, grounding at the blood-red sand beach furthest from the inlet, and the sad procession had walked inland, past the fields of wheat, barley, and white cicer which fed the attendants and guards, finally to the stone buildings of the outer temple._

_Here, within the first chamber, only the inverted pillars in their coat of wine-red paint supporting the fragile white breccia the chamber had been tunneled under, and the repeating rosettes in the painted wall decoration echoed the lighter, airy feeling of those other buildings. Here was sombre and ill-lit and nearly bereft of symbolism. Because here, so close to the source, no mere image could capture the heavy reality of the Asterion itself._

_The Iaonesian youths were huddled and miserable; some trying to remain brave, others crying openly. Even five years ago, with the last group, it was obvious the nature of the service they had been selected to render was being painted in darker and darker terms back home. Areatha's homeland was on increasingly hostile terms with the growing empire West of it. And this group of newcomers had apparently embarked under the impression that they were to be sacrifices to some dark god._

_Areatha scowled inside (outside, she kept an expressionless mask that befit the Mistress of the Temple.) That impression was not entirely wrong. Service to the thing below was harsh. Once, they had been able to use the experienced members of each previous group to train the newer and stronger workers. This year, there were no survivors to step into that role._

_The Asterion complained constantly now. Small earthquakes rocked the palace. It raged whenever its stalls weren't mucked out or its feed trough properly stocked, faint echoes of those rages reflecting down the multiple corners of the labyrinth to make themselves known outside the temple complex._

_Sated, the Asterion provided gifts. When angered, it shook the ground for miles around. Her mother had believed, and Areatha believed now, that left unchecked those rages would rise to tear the very island apart. One did not have to stand within the presence of the Asterion itself to realize its power. _

_Only twice in Areatha's sixteen years had she threaded the labyrinth herself to look upon it with unshaded eyes. And she was smart enough not to linger. The Taurokathapsians had to work much closer. For all their careful dancing through the staggered barriers, the young tributes would sicken and slow, aging weeks with every day until an unwary moment or a caprice of the thing at the center took their lives._

_So the youths were right to tremble. Fourteen of them, seven male and seven female, fit and in the prime of health. Which definition very much extended to the ringer. Areatha could pick him out easily. So could the temple guards, who gripped tighter their heavy double-bitted axes. This youth was of noble blood, and a warrior (which often amounted to the same thing among the hungry new would-be empires of the Aegean)._

_And it was he that she addressed then, in reality as well as in myth. In the legend, she was drawn to his beauty, "womanly feelings first awoken in the young priestess" by his comely face and well-developed physique. Well, she was not quite as inexperienced as that! The legends also said he had his sword hidden in his tunic. The temple guards were not as incompetent as that, either. Oddly, the reality made him more heroic (albeit foolish); he had come without arms, with the confidence that he would be able to improvise a response to whatever situation he might find at the other end of the sea voyage._

_"Why do you come here?" she demanded of him._

_"We are those chosen to serve your gods," he said blandly, verbally placing himself as just one of the tribute._

_"Nonsense," she said sharply. "You chose yourself. Why did _you_ come?"_

_He met her eyes then, and dropped the dissembling. "I can save these people," he said softly. "Help me."_

_"Many have said that," Areatha replied. Then, raising her voice, "Separate this one. Guard him carefully. Let the others be shown to the Labyrinth."_

* * *

_Many years later, she was able to smile sadly in memory. In the then, she had retreated to her chambers, troubled. She knew the Asterion was a curse on her family. And she was learning more. No sheltered noble maiden, she had grown enough in her years to begin to understand something of the world. The wealth and prestige of the Kapadar, but particularly her own family and the colony around Akrotiri, was supported on the blood of innocents._

_Below the decorated palace and the villas of the wealthy, below the sunlight and the multi-colored beaches, young women and young men, barely older than herself, labored in darkness and despair. And this was wrong._

_Furthermore, it was futile._

_Her mother had discovered the thing. That real history had vanished with the island, and the tales now spoke of a Queen Pasiphaë — and spun about her a scandalous fantasy involving a white bull. Her husband, Areatha's father, was the most powerful of the Hundred, not a king; but peoples who had newly discovered the worship of tyrants were unable to grasp these more subtle politics._

_And her mother had been fascinated by those who came before. Whatever crude dwellings they may have had did not survive the years; only within the smooth-walled rock caves that undercut many parts of the island were their stone tools and fire pits preserved. They did not even farm, subsisting on fish and game, including (from the evidence of the bones) a most peculiar animal twice the weight of a man, with a broad snout and huge grinding teeth in a flat jaw._

_And it was in one of those caves that she found and awakened a thing the primitives had once worshipped. She spoke, often, of the golden light and the warmth that filled her body as it responded to her. Spoke thus for those few years that were left to her, that is. Even then, the Asterion asked much from those who worshipped it._

_Areatha was still but a child when she discovered her mother's curse was also hers. She shared the blood, and through it could communicate with that peculiar sibling down below. Once, it had even gifted a kind of liquid silver that ran like honey, impossible to capture in the hand, until it had all been lost in the many cracks in the floor. Her father hoped she might convince it to produce copper as well, and free them from that costly but necessary trade with Kyrnos, but her experiments had little success and, she had quickly found, tended to irritate it._

_All of the underworld was its dominion. It raised the fresh water in the springs. It brought forth the bubbling warmth that was piped into the baths and the larger buildings. It called to itself, too, the creatures of the sea; the fishermen would never not have to stray far from the harbor to fill their nets._

_And yet, they would be better off if it were to sleep again. She rose, herself, dressed in the fitted under-bodice and her warmer robes, with leather footwear to preserve her feet from the cold stones. The guards greeted her without surprise as she passed through the antechamber; she had made these nocturnal journeys before._

_Into the inner temple, then. She turned left at the first of the heavy dark stone inner walls, passed through the first archway, then turned sharply right. Whatever miasma came from the thing at the center, corners seemed to confuse it. But only a little. Only distance was true shelter, and Areatha had begun to suspect even the distance of the entire island was not quite enough._

_But when she came to the outermost aumbry, she was startled to see a figure there._

* * *

_"I mean you no harm, Mistress," the stranger said lightly, neither hostile nor afraid. "I'm a friend and companion to the young prince you have locked up inside."_

_"Have you come to free him?" Areatha, also, found she was not afraid. She could raise a cry before he could move, certainly, but she did not yet feel the need to._

_The man chuckled. He was a gangling middle-age, all elbows and knees with an engaging grin and he moved as if half-inebriated. As Areatha would discover later, he often was. His garb was vaguely Iaonesian, a short tunic belted at the waist, but with a barbaric touch; a leopard skin was thrown about his shoulders as a crude mantle._

_"My friends call me Dio," he said. "Very good ones have called me Fufluns — much as I've tried to convince them otherwise!"_

_"You stowed away," Areatha pronounced. "But why go into the labyrinth?"_

_"The Prince can rescue himself," he said. "He's good at that. We've had more than a few adventures already. I don't do the hero stuff myself. I guess you could say I'm more of a student."_

_"Of what?" Areatha was curious, despite herself already drawn to this strange man._

_"Oh, this and that. The art of wine making. I'm very good with cattle, too."_

_"And what draws you to study the Asterion?" she gestured sharply at the desk of the aumbry where the blocky crystals glittered._

_"As I said, I'm good with cattle." He gave her a studied look. "You seem a bright girl. Have you grasped what kind of monster you've had those poor slaves here tending?"_

_A monster. He was quite right, of course. Almost she spoke, then, to pledge to this friend of the Prince the help she had earlier refused. But how could she abandon her family, her responsibility, her people?"_

_Dio seemed to understand. "It's too late," he informed her somberly. "I'd have to get closer to make sure, but what you've got is a kludge built by an inventive idiot on top of a poor idea. Amazing it has lasted so long — at least ten thousand years, it has to be. And that in itself gives rise to _so_ many questions."_

_"What do you mean it is too late?" Areatha demanded._

_"Haven't you seen the signs? We passed the docks on the way in — haven't you noticed they are well above the water line now? Haven't you noticed the smell from the hot springs? The magma chamber is swelling. Pressure is building below the plug. This toy up here sucked too much energy from the deep thermal tap and there's no way to reset the balance now."_

_"Explain better." Her voice was as cold as a dagger to the throat._

_Dio shrugged. "How can I say it?" he said. "Boom."_

* * *

_And thus another tale was born, to become part of the legends wrapped around the young Prince. Eventually he had so many the story tellers had to invent other heroes just to bear the burden. So many heroes they needed another ship to hold them, which they named the Argos, and it was filled in its time with heroes and demi-gods beyond counting._

_The fourteen youths, one girl, and one drunk in a leopard-skin returned in triumph in that first nameless ship with the single black sail and the Egyptian eyes painted on the prow. The Prince kept that ship, too, through his tumultuous reign, although truth be told most of it, wood and canvas and rigging, had been replaced at one time or another. It killed him, too, in a ludicrous accident — just as it had, indirectly, killed his father before him._

_By then Areatha had been long abandoned for a younger (and more politically connected) princess, finding solace for a time in Dio's arms until his passions drove him onwards, either towards the heart of Mycenae or back to Egypt (although he professed to have been born in a far more distant land than that.)_

_The disaster Dio had warned of happened slowly enough her people managed to evacuate in safety. Not so fortunate were those in coastal towns when the final blast came, raising a wall of sea water that raged across half the known world. She stayed for a while in Phaistos, running yet another temple and playing with some ideas for a new alphabet until samples reached her of a superior one already created by yet another seafaring people._

_Without regret she put aside the wooden stamps she had so laboriously carved, leaving nothing but a few test blocks in clay for following generations to wonder at (if they had that rare kind of enquiring mind to do so, that is). Playing with language was safe. Dealing first-hand with gods, however, was to be avoided. She was pleased to note the Mycenae seemed to have grasped that lesson._

_All of that, of course, was far in her future, when still in dewey youth and trepidation and uncertainty she crept silently into the temple one last time._

_It was time to face the bull. It was that time when a person needed to thread their way into the darkness of their personal labyrinth and look full on what was within. To comprehend and accept and honor the danger and power and vitality of that thing that was life itself, and to pass thus into full adulthood._

_She hadn't the political power to end the worship of the Asterion. She could no longer accept the horrible, wasting sacrifices made to it in hopes of bringing more wealth to Kapadian treasuries. And she could no longer escape the knowledge that no effort of hers or of anyone else's could long postpone the final destructive rage._

_There was but one tiny thread of hope to follow. If only the Iaonesian youths could be returned to the city of their patron goddess Athana. Without them working below her people would be forced to confront the reality that the Asterion could not be controlled. She would be traitor, but in the final end of things more lives would be saved, Kapadian as well as Iaonesian._

_Time, then, for blood. And one thing more, one last piece of the puzzle._

_"Come to gloat?" the young man asked as she approached his cell. Despite the words he didn't seem bitter or in the least bit despairing._

_"No," Areatha told him. "What is your name?"_

_"Theseus," he said. "Means 'one who gathers together,' I'm told."_

_"What would you do with a weapon?" She asked abruptly._

_"A weapon?" He seemed surprised. "Actually, what I could really use right now is some string."_

_"String?!"_

_"I can save these people." He caught and held her gaze, intently. "Help me."_

_"Many have said that," she repeated. Then smiled for what felt like the first time in years. "But you are the first I believe could do it."_

* * *

The Asgard Homeworld, Coordinates Unrevealed.

* * *

Memory. It was the second thing to go.

Supreme Commander Thor appreciated the Tau'ri witticism. As with the best humor, however, it illuminated. There was something he'd forgotten, all right, only he didn't remember what it was.

This was almost a tautology for an Asgard. The only things an Asgard_ could_ forget were those that were not remembered.

Thor paused. As bright as his human friends were, there were elements of what made an Asgard that they found exceedingly hard to grasp. The Tau'ri had a recorded civilization for mere thousands of years. And very, very few of those years — a mere blink of that total span — were spent as a technological civilization. They were just beginning to discover what it meant to be digitally interconnected, sharing a pool of information so near-seamlessly it was effectively group telepathy.

This was one of the problems that made continuation of the Asgard species through any normal fashion so difficult. The Tau'ri had the anecdote of the old married couple who would complete each other's sentences. Thor had, personally, a shared experience with other Asgard of rather more than two thousand years.

How long would it take to educate a child to become a functional member of such a society? How many hundreds of years alone just before they could move within their technological surrounds without destroying themselves or others through sheer accident? The same problem faced immigration. And the depth of their shared experience meant that even if newcomers were integrated, they would integrate with a necessarily different experience. The race would change because of it; again, this was less continuation and more something like rebirth.

And once you accepted that change and rebirth were the only logical continuation, it was no longer necessary (in the majority opinion of the Asgard) to think in terms of direct genetic succession.

But come back to memory. A lifespan in the thousands of years was enough to gather far too many memories. As uncomfortably emotional, as awkward as some might be, the dangerous aspect is that the more one knew and the more one formed opinions about what one knew, the more paradox surfaced.

The Tau'ri had recently figured this out as well. The first human to put it mathematically had been named Kurt Goëdel, and even he did not at first fully comprehend what he had found. Which is in essence that no complete system could also be consistent. Basically, paradox was inevitable. And too much paradox could drive even an Asgard insane.

So sometimes you needed to put a memory aside, remove it from your current _Weltanschauung_; move it to external storage and tag it for later retrieval. Memories had footprints, however, and sometimes even a tag was too much information for mental comfort. In those rare cases, a deeper level of storage was sometimes necessary. Sometimes it was necessary to hide the memory of having had a memory at all.

And Thor was starting to remember something. Which meant the triggers he had set for its revelation were on the verge of being triggered. It had to do with Mjolnir. There had once been such a weapon. It wasn't just a prop of the god personae he had created to guide a more primitive people. It was a device, a weapon, a tool, and he'd left it. Somewhere.

And oh yes there was one other thing. That unusual Goa'uld that Lara Croft person had unearthed had something to do with it.

* * *

Suburban Colorado Springs, 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W

* * *

They met at O'Neill's domicile. Teal'c requested admittance and acknowledged O'Neill's permission with a nod of his head. He had been honored by the promise O'Neill had made on Chulak — in his words, "For this, you can stay at my place!" — but he would never abuse that privilege.

They were all wearing what his military friends called "mufti." Teal'c had yet to trace the origin of that term. O'Neill had made many comments about how he would have to get used to that style of clothing again, and how he needed to go on the hunt in search of a job, until Major Carter had spoken sharply to him.

Teal'c agreed with her. This could only be temporary. O'Neill was too valuable to the Tau'ri for General Hammond to leave him on a bench.

"Carter, T," O'Neill addressed them, tossing cans of beverage under-handed. "No beer for you, Daniel," he added, although he also threw a can towards Daniel Jackson. Who fumbled it. "Um, Doctor?" O'Neill looked towards the fifth person making herself comfortable in the sunny living room. "Do you want…?"

"Please," Doctor Frasier replied. "I'm dry as a bone." She was studying the others with a lively interest. SG1 had spent so much time in their own company, it might seem challenging for an outsider to join their conversation. Although from Teal'c's experience, very little phased the lively Chief Medical Officer of Stargate Command.

O'Neill waited the proper interval for the ritual opening of the beer before he began the conversation. "I'm sure you are all wondering why I've asked you here today," he said at first. There were polite chuckles at that; after a pause, Teal'c joined in with a genial smile. "Basically, we're up the creek without a paddle. Horus slipped through our fingers, there may be a threat to the Asgard, and our best lead was driven underground by those idiots at the NID."

"I concur." As Teal'c had conjectured, Doctor Frasier showed no hesitation about speaking up. "I've made no progress towards explaining the effect of the Tears of Horus pharmacologically, but the directly observed behavior is chilling. If Horus managed to talk the Asgard into doping themselves with something similar we have a real problem."

"If we could convince the Asgard that Horus was up to no good…" Daniel Jackson began.

"Tried that," O'Neill said. "They are too stubborn to listen."

"They have some reason," Doctor Frasier argued. "Their existence as a species may depend on what Horus has promised them. Also," she frowned, working out how best to say it, "Their very intelligence may be a problem. How can I put it? Con artists have said it is the people who think they are smart who are the easiest to fool."

"You can't hypnotize me; I'm British!" Major Carter said then, against the clear fact that she was not at all British. Then Teal'c realized from the expressions of the others that she must have been quoting something. The others didn't seem to know what to make of it, either. "Peter Cushing," Major Carter said defensively. "_At the Earth's Core._ With Doug McClure and Caroline Munro. No-one?"

"Maybe I should do the jokes," O'Neill said gently.

"Thing of it is," Doctor Frasier took a thoughtful pull at her beer, "If Thor is getting this much push-back, it might be because the Asgard he is trying to convince are _already_ under Horus' influence."

"And that is really, really bad news," Daniel Jackson said.

"So…" O'Neill drawled thoughtfully. "We know who dun it. What we don't know is what he, um, dun."

Daniel Jackson winced at this. Doctor Frasier looked amused.

"What I mean is, the Asgard seem to think Horus is some sort of combination of Mother Theresa and…some other person who does good."

"And the historical reality may be different." Daniel Jackson had obviously been restraining himself until this opening. He handed off his beer to the first person to take it from his hands, fumbled open a portfolio, and started pulling out paper. The first image he selected, he held up high. Checked to see it was right-side up. Then held it out again for everyone else to see.

Teal'c saw a statue of a long-faced, wide-hipped man in the full regalia of an Egyptian King — oddly similar to the regalia of certain traditionalist System Lords, though the long cylindrical chin-beard had never caught on.

"This, of course," Daniel Jackson effortlessly slipped into lecture mode, "is a statuary depiction in the Amarna style of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh…"

"…Akhenaten," Major Carter finished for him. Daniel Jackson gaped at her. "Saw the opera," she explained. "Jim took me."

"Can you hum a little?" O'Neill wanted to know.

"Phillip Glass," both Major Carter and Doctor Frasier said as one. This did not appear to illuminate the Colonel. "American Minimalist composer," Doctor Frasier amplified.

"Very modern," Major Carter added her own explanation. "Same guy who wrote _Einstein on the Beach_ — which is the opera that got me interested in him."

"Keep an eye on John Adams," Doctor Frasier turned to her. "He's working on an opera about the first atomic bomb." She turned back to the others. "Um, sorry," she said brightly. "As you were saying, Doctor Jackson?"

Daniel Jackson sighed. "Akhenaten," he said. "Reigned from 1351 to 1334. He was the son of Amenhotep III, whose reign is considered the high point of the New Kingdom; a time of peace, greatly expanded borders, massive building projects. The young Amenhotep IV may have been a sickly and unusual child, and there is some evidence his childhood was spent isolated from court and the usual round of religious ceremony. For whatever reason, in the fifth year of his reign he changed his name to Akhenaten in honor of a new worship of the Aten or Sun Disk, which he placed above all the other gods of the existing pantheon."

"Wait…'51 to '34?" Doctor Frasier questioned.

"He ruled backwards?" O'Neill asked.

"Like Merlin?" Doctor Frasier added impishly.

"BCE, not CE," Daniel Jackson explained patiently. "Not AD," he added when O'Neill still appeared confused. "In any case, as you might imagine this move was unpopular, especially among the priesthood. After his death his name was struck from official records; essentially he was erased from history, to the point where we only recently learned of him again. This also means that what happened immediately following his reign is unclear. Smenkhkare probably followed him, then Neferneferuaten (if he actually existed; 'he' may have been the late Akhenaten's wife, Nefertiti), then his son Tutankhamen (after he dropped the '-aten' from his own name.)"

O'Neill nodded. "That one even I know. Born in Arizona, got a condo made of stone-a."

"The Boy King," Daniel Jackson said. "Died at a young age and there are still theories he might have been assassinated, but more likely it was simple accident compounding his already poor health. Plus there were certain genetic, er…"

"What Daniel is walking around there," Doctor Frasier interjected, "Is that he suffered from inbreeding, just like the Hapsburgs, or the Bourbon kings." She smiled thinly. "If I remember, his mom was also his aunt. For some reason Steve Martin didn't put that part in the song."

"Yes, well," Daniel Jackson seemed eager to move on, "a more interesting aspect to us is that his name translates literally as 'Living Image of Amun.' Just as Smenkhkare's full name includes 'Vigorous is the Soul of Ra.' Remember, during the New Kingdom Amun was basically a form of Ra."

"_That_ Ra," O'Neill said. "So you think that Anekat…Ankynam…Tut's dad was trying to stamp out a lingering Ra worship, and got himself and his kid killed for it."

"Maybe." Unusually, Daniel Jackson seemed unsure. Perhaps the loud arguments he had been having with Lady Croft during the time she had spent with them had caused him some self-doubt. "The Egyptian religion is complex, and it is too easy to over-interpret what we think we see. In any case," he seemed to shake himself, "I'm willing to be that's what Lara meant by looking for a 'heretic.'"

"So where does Horus fit in?" O'Neill wanted to know.

"A good question. Horus is an ancient and long-lived figure in Egyptian mythology, associated closely with the Pharaohs — one of the five common forms of pharaonic name is so constructed as to imply ruling as the direct representative of Horus. And dynastic Egypt as recorded in history is post-Ra. That may imply that he was pivotal in making the transition from Ra's rule to the (human) First Dynasty."

"The king is dead, long live the king?" Doctor Frasier put in wryly.

"Not the first time that's happened in human history," O'Neill said. "Seems like every time a tyrant falls, people start looking for a new one."

"Whatever else you may say about Ra, he made the trains run on time," Major Carter mis-quoted.

A contribution was called for. Putting on his best straight face, Teal'c said, "There were no trains in ancient Egypt, Major Carter."

She grinned, showing a bit of teeth. "I know that, Teal'c."

"People," O'Neill said. "Jokes. Mine."

"Right, Horus," Daniel Jackson continued. "Generally said to be the son of Osiris, and either son or sister to Isis.

Teal'c spoke then. "Osiris and Isis were raised to System Lords during the Second Goa'uld Dynasty. Shortly after, Osiris was betrayed and murdered by Setesh. Isis is said to have brought his dismembered body back to life with her magic." He smiled, then. "Or so the reigning System Lords would want us to think. Since joining the Tau'ri, I have begun to think like an historian."

O'Neill gave a theatrical gasp and collapsed backwards on the sofa clutching his chest. He looked up at Teal'c with sorrowful eyes. "Et tu, Brute?"

Teal'c had listened sympathetically to O'Neill's tale of being trapped in a small car surrounded by historians and archaeologists. He had also been reading enough of what the Tau'ri called "classics" to understand the allusion O'Neill had just made. "Indeed," he said, with an incline of his head and another small smile.

"As I understand it — well, reading between the lines as Teal'c suggests — Osiris was the first big success of Thoth's Sarcophagus technology," Daniel Jackson said. "Worth noting that both Osiris and Thoth were in favor of bringing advances to the people they ruled. Thoth is practically the father of medicine."

"Osiris and Isis attempted to overthrow Ra, or at least were accused of it, and they disappear from the System Lord archives from that point on. Setesh fled as well, and shortly after this Thoth was banished, although the declared reason for the latter was Ra's displeasure with flaws in the Sarcophagus technology."

"Woah, T," O'Neill said.

Major Carter turned to face him full-on, "Teal'c, that's the most words I've heard you say at one time since we first met."

Perhaps it was. Teal'c had not failed to notice that Major Carter, too, had been more outspoken of late during their usual briefings. The latter, at least, he had ascribed to a positive influence from the brief presence amid their company of the outspoken Lady Croft.

"Can we back up a little?" Doctor Frasier was speaking now. She bobbed her head in the direction of the latest pictorial resource Daniel Jackson was holding aloft. "There's something that I've never quite understood about Horus, and, oh, what's the one with the dog head?"

"Anubis?" Daniel Jackson guessed.

"Yes, and that's my question," Doctor Frasier continued. "What's with the animal heads?"

"It's, um, artistic," Daniel Jackson said. "Okay, let me try it this way. You know how in classical Egyptian depictions of the human form, the torso is seen from the front, the head and legs are seen in profile?"

"Is that what it is?" Doctor Frasier said. "Okay, yes, I can see it now."

"The artwork isn't about realism, it is about portraying what is most true. It's a bit like Cubism, really. Show each body part from the best vantage, the angle that makes it look most like itself. Idealized forms."

"And that's why they walk like an Egyptian," O'Neill said.

"All the cops in the donut shop say," Doctor Frasier added helpfully.

"Or, say, look at the Narmer Palette," Daniel Jackson ignored the byplay. "King Narmer is shown several times larger than the peoples he just conquered. This wasn't meant to imply he was a giant; it is simply to illustrate his relative importance. So, anyhow, Horus was at one point associated with the sky, almost a co-deity with Ra the Sun God, and the easiest symbol for 'sky' is something that flies, like a bird. So the symbol of a falcon is used to show this is part of his domain and powers."

"Like the Christ being depicted as a lamb," Doctor Frasier mused.

"Or it could be, you know, the _bird helmet_ those guys were always wearing," O'Neill interjected dryly. "Didn't you used to have one of those, Teal'c?"

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed. "The helmets of the Horus Guards would be certain to leave a lasting impression. As would the helmets of the Setesh Guard, although for…different reasons." He smiled in memory.

"So if Carter's friend Tanit ever got her own personal guard, they'd be wearing…"

"Lion helmets, probably," Daniel Jackson answered.

"Huh," O'Neill said. He sat back again. Following his example, the others spent a silent interval in the communion of the beer. "Anyone else need a refill?" O'Neill asked at last.

"So is this how your briefings usually go?" Despite her words, Doctor Frasier accepted a fresh can with relish. "It doesn't seem to me we've decided much of anything."

"Well," Daniel Jackson said in a contrary tone, "I'm going to look into the reign of Akhenaten. Remember, the hidden chamber Horus's canopic jar was in was under construction clearly dated to the 19th dynasty. So as tempting as it is to look for him behind more modern historical events, it is probably he was placed there during the time of Tutankhamen."

"So he wasn't Horace Greeley."

"Or Horace Tabor."

Doctor Frasier raised her eyebrows. "Does Jim only take you to modern operas? What's wrong with a little _la Boheme?_"

"Or Horace Walpole, or Harry the Horse," Daniel Jackson cut the byplay off impatiently. "There's no reason to think he would have picked any names even vaguely similar to Horus. You might as well think that Osiris showed up later as Cyrus the Great."

"That sounds pretty reasonable to me," O'Neill said blandly.

"Only in English," Daniel retorted. "In Old Persian, the king's name is closer to 'Kourosh.' And as for Osiris…we don't even know what the vowel sounds were in Old Egyptian!"

"You mean the world doesn't," O'Neill said. He continued more gently. "You figured them out, when you learned how to talk to Sha're."

Daniel Jackson's eyes clouded. He spoke, but his mind wasn't really in it. "Even under Ra, there would have been vowel changes; the phonological rules hold even in the presence of stabilizing factors. Although I have to admit a living god is a hell of a stabilizing factor." Then his eyes cleared. "On the other hand, Cyrus II of Persia would have been a great one. His accomplishments in human rights alone would have been sure to impress the Asgard."

"So let's sum up. Daniel, you've got a possible lead in Egypt, then?"

"Amarna," Daniel Jackson said.

"What?"

"The capitol city founded by Ankhenaten, near present-day al-Minya, It gave the name to the same era of the latter 18th Dynasty."

"Which is where?"

"Egypt."

"I really need to stop doing that," O'Neill muttered.

"If I may, sir," Major Carter said. "There is another avenue available."

"Go on."

"Lara Croft has associates. Research assistants. She may have been in contact with them. In any case, one of them has been in contact with _us_. I think we should follow that up."

"Ooh, road trip. Merry old England, double decker busses, what ho crickey me lad."

Everyone winced at that. "If you see a blue police box," Doctor Frasier said, "Please just keep walking."

* * *

Out of This World Cafe, New Mexico, 33°23′14″N 104°31′41″W

* * *

The man in front of her was fit, armed, dressed in a dark blue outfit of military cut. Behind him, diesel vibrating through the air at low idle, the impressive mass of the Ark III sat amid the militarized vehicles of an expedition on the move. His rank tabs said "Colonel" and the patches identified him as a part of "Genesis" and he had several more men and women outside.

Lara Croft chose her next words with care. She put down the plate, smiled a smile that came no where near her eyes, and said, "Would you like fries with that?"


	20. Chapter 19: Meanwhile Back at the Manor

"You went full Eco there. Never go full Eco."

It just grow'd, like Topsy. A hundred thousand words ago I was on a yacht off Malta with a bottle shaped like a falcon. Any outline since has been playing catch-up.

Up until the last chapter I was more-or-less on track for the final rising action of Act III and resolution within the next 5-6 chapters. But SG-1 too smart for me, and blabbed Horus' big plot a lot earlier than I intended. So, we'll see. Maybe there _is_ more to this thing after all.

And my apologies for all the obscure references. I'll back off now. I promise.

* * *

Abbington Estate, Surrey, England: 51.15°N 0.25°W

* * *

Dying for King or Country — or equally uncaring gods — was a fool's game. "Bob" had tried his hand at service to his country, but now, like so many others in his field, he worked to suit himself. He intended to live well and play hard and it didn't bother him one bit that he'd probably die young.

The client was a thin-looking bleached-blond with a nasal middle-America accent, goth make-up and a black leather outfit that probably cost more than a Barrett M107 with that factory-fresh smell of lightly-oiled steel. She'd given her name as Alice, which was no more hers than Bob was his. But Trent had set up the meeting, and Bob trusted him. She'd agreed to his price and he'd assembled a small team — mostly former soldiers as well (with the exception of Craig, facetiously titled "the master of unlocking" within their small circle for his skill in hacking security systems.)

Bob thought it was probably overkill. She needed an object, "A small, personal memento," out of a country mansion. Going in armed instead of sending a couple of skilled second-story men implied either she didn't care about collateral damage, or that she was sending a message. Going for full-out mercenaries, though, meant either the client was a complete idiot, or that she was lying to him.

He was going to go with the later. It went with the territory; betrayal or arrest were more a threat than the (too infrequent, for his taste) firefight. He did not like, however, where the op was going down. He vastly preferred working in Central Africa, the always-friendly Middle East, or amid the fragments of the former Soviet Union. The UK was a lot less casual about gunplay on their shores, and the officials there were downright hostile to bribes. It would not be a good place to get caught.

The money was good. It would have to be, Bob reflected. The more time he spent watching Alice, the more certain he was that this was the only job he was going to do for her. This wasn't just because he'd heard rumors. Her connection to Trent came from Senator Rutland's son, who had employed several people Bob knew — and lost them in mysterious circumstances somewhere in Bolivia.

Alice was part of that same drifting set of international playboys as James, traveling corners of the world far from the short-list of hotspots the paparazzi hovered vulture-like around; places where they could smash up things and creatures then retreat back into their vast carelessness (and equally vast reserves of wealth hidden within Matryoshka-doll nests of holding companies and numbered Panamanian bank accounts.)

There was in her voice and carriage and features a spoiled entitlement, an attitude that (against all evidence) the world had wronged her and her driving ambition was to make it back to where she was supposed to be. None of which was that unusual in and of itself, but within her eyes Bob believed he saw the spark of true madness.

He was going to change his opinion. It wasn't foolishness or undisclosed dangers that led her to pick a full fire team of very well-armed help to pick up her trinket. It was, instead, the need to _see something burn._

* * *

"So." The lanky, muscular young man sighted down the nickel-plated automatic. "The Septics are arriving Tuesday."

"Zip," his friend chided, pushing the fashionably long hair out of his eyes and looking somewhat concernedly at the similar weapon on the table in front of him. "Be nice to our guests."

"I don't mind telling you, man, I'm in two minds about this." Zip turned his hand sideways to examine his weapon, then set it down on the high table that separated them from the targets. "Lara's gone off the grid. This woman Carter and her friends may have an idea where she's gone and if there's any way we can help." He trailed off with the last.

"But neither of us is comfortable with giving away secrets to outsiders," Alister said it for him. He pushed at the side of the heavy metallic thing in front of him. It slid slightly, gently knocking into the loaded magazine. "I'm not comfortable with this, either," he said. "I mean, what kind of archaeologist carries a gun?"

"The kind that wants to hang around Lara Croft," Zip said dryly. "Look, I'll walk you through it. This is a SIG-Sauer 9mm automatic. Now, first thing is to pick it up." He was rapidly warming to his lesson. "Right hand, magazine in the left."

Alister sighed, shrugged inside his suit jacket, gingerly picked up the gun. He held it carefully, making sure not to put his fingers on any of the various triggers and levers and other mysterious moving parts.

"Magazine," Zip prompted. He gestured; the magazine was already in his own weapon.

Alister tried, realized it didn't fit, turned it around and that time it slid inside. Seeing Zip's frown, he pushed further, harder than he thought he should be pushing, until he felt a "click."

"Now rack it," Zip said, too patiently. "Pull the slide back."

Alister gripped the top part of the gun. It slid back towards him with an oiled smoothness, but it had a heavy spring. It got away from him, and as it snapped forward the gun threatened to slip from his fingers as well. He caught it up with a frantic grab.

"If I may, sir." Winston was instantly at his elbow, gently but firmly pushing the gun back in the direction of the targets…and away, Alister belatedly realized, from very nearly pointing at his friend. He nearly dropped it in truth at that point.

"It's all good," Zip grinned. "But let me show you the safety. It's the tab on the left, right above the magazine release. Push it down."

Alister pushed. The magazine dropped free and hit the concrete floor with far too much noise.

"_Above_ the magazine release," Zip said with a wider grin. "Here, let me put mine on safe and I'll help you pick that up." He pushed, there was a click, and he turned towards his friend.

"_If I may, sir,_" Winston's arm was just as gentle. But just as uncompromising. "Your instructor may have momentarily forgotten," he spoke with a smooth rapidity that evinced not a hair of tension, "That the P226, like many automatics of its type, lacks a manual safety. The decocking lever renders it drop-safe, but it will still fire upon a firm pull of the trigger."

It took Zip a moment to wade through the Oxford English. He may have blanched, then — not that it would show — and he quickly moved his finger away from the trigger and the gun away from his friend.

"Now, then," Winston said jovially, a schoolteacher glint in his eye. "Place that magazine back on the table. The first thing we will do, Mister Fletcher, is properly clear and then inspect your weapon…"

Alister found himself doing just that. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zip wince, shrug, and then fall in beside him for the day's lesson.

* * *

"I feel like the first Mongol horseman to reach the Great Wall of China," Daniel said. Their driver had approached the massive Jacobian manor from the South, giving them the best perspective on the three-story central building and the flanking wings built from the red-brown bricks of the royal palace that had come before. All about them was green and pleasant land; the sprawling grounds of the estate backed onto public land (former deer park, current golf course and all).

"Did not the Warriors of the Great Khan go around that fortification, Daniel Jackson?"

"Teal'c, at the time Temujin rose to power the Mongol tribes were so poor some accounts describe them fashioning clothes from the stitched-together skins of field mice. Class disparity is a lot tougher of a wall to breach. Look," Daniel gestured, where a white-haired man in black morning coat and grey vest waited to greet them. "They have a butler. They. Have. A. Butler."

Abbingdon Estate was impressive, from the manicured grounds to the rows of tall, multi-paned windows (the architect had no fear of the Window Tax) to the rampant lions along the parapet. "Heck of a crash pad," Daniel muttered.

"The Magazine of Forbes estimates 4.6 million for the building alone," Teal'c delivered another one of his surprising bits of expertise.

"It's rare to find one of these old mansions in private hands," Daniel said. "A lot of them are in public trust — a surprising number have been turned into schools."

"The magazine also estimates Lady Croft's personal wealth as somewhere in excess of 900 million," Teal'c volunteered. "Although if he were real," he amended, "Scrooge of the McDuck Clan would place significantly higher in their list."

Their car stopped and the driver opened the doors for them. The butler — rather, majordomo, Daniel thought — greeted them calmly. "Mister Fletcher relays his regrets for not meeting you at the station," the man said. "You will find him and his associate in the Morning Room, where they are being well-plied with their morning coffee."

He gestured economically with one white-gloved hand. "Stewart will see to your bags. I am needed urgently in the West Garden. Now if you please, the Morning Room is this way…"

* * *

"So how did the historic meeting go? I have to tell you, I was expecting bloodshed." Carter was using Skype, but she'd turned the camera off. It was late enough in her day she wasn't inclined to try to look presentable. Given the time difference between Colorado and Surrey, though, that would have been even harder for Zip. She'd been amused to see Zip had connected through at least two different anonymizers, with his MAC spoofed as well — right down to the top of the RAID array he seemed to be using.

Everything Zip had told her about his friend and associate Alister had painted him as far too Daniel-like. Daniel at his worst; academic, pedantic to a fault, imaginative and flighty and far too easily enthused about every bit of folklore and myth and outright tall tale about the ancient past. Both were equally opinionated as to their pet theories, and Carter had never met two of that ilk who believed in the _same_ outré theory.

"Me too," Zip admitted cheerfully. "They are getting along like a house on fire now, though. I fear we've unleashed a new horror upon an unsuspecting world."

"So there was no friction at all?" Carter had trouble believing this.

"Well, sure. Their first meeting was spectacular. It got better, though, after Daniel shot him."

"_Shot him?_"

"Yeah, with that zat nickle telly…that raygun your guy was carrying around. Seriously, what kind of…"

"The kind that regularly fights aliens," Carter said dryly.

"You people lead interesting lives," Zip said. "I didn't understand a word of what they were fighting about," he complained. "The first thing Alister asked about is if your Daniel still believed the Great Pyramid was built two thousand years too early. And then they were off, yelling things about Snuffy-roo and Key Ops and the Sphinx, and something about the counting of the cows."

Carter laughed. "I can picture it exactly."

"And Alister asked if he thought the pyramids kept razor blades sharp, too. And Daniel said something about all myths having a kernel of truth to them. And Alister asked him if that included the Tooth Fairy. And Daniel went on a long discussion of which kings made what kinds of markings in a burial chamber and Alister retorted by talking about some fellow named Imhotep."

"Did he mention Tana Leaves as well?" Carter asked, intrigued.

"No, they went off on more discussion of ramps and rollers and how a Japanese construction company had demonstrated how you could move one of the stones, and Daniel was snarking about some guy named Thor with a balsa-wood raft and how knowing it _could_ be done wasn't proof that it _had _been done, and Alister snarked back about Ancient Aliens with magic ray guns levitating stones…and that's when Daniel shot him with one."

"Give him my sympathies," Carter sounded anything but. "I've been shot by one of those myself."

"You people _do_ live interesting lives."

* * *

"So…what do you think of our guests now? Wait…is that a revolver? What kind of…"

"The kind that was reluctant about letting you talk him into this in the first place," Alister said a little sharply. From the evidence, he was still feeling the effects of yesterday's argument. Or, rather, the fireworks at its climax. "This is a Detective Special," Alister said. "From the collection, of course. I thought perhaps a smaller gun would be easier to handle."

Zip silently let his friend be led through the safety and loading procedures by the ever-polite Winston. He couldn't see but was quite sure there was a twinkle the older man was carefully hiding. There were several things he had somehow managed _not_ to say…not until Alister pulled the trigger.

He almost but not quite put the hammer in his forehead as the gun jerked back. "Special isn't the name of the gun, it's the name for the high-powered cartridge," Zip remarked casually, then. "And have you noticed how short-barreled guns seem to have a lot more recoil?"

"What?" Alister said. "What?"

"They're noisy, too," Zip grinned.

* * *

"So, let's recap here." Alister was cushioned in the extremely comfortable library. As was Daniel, with the exception that he obviously itched to open each and every one of the enticingly rare and obscure books in the place.

It was mid-day, and the others had wandered off (excepting Winston, who although invisible at present would uncannily poof into view the instant he was needed). Alister was recovered from his first-hand experience with Goa'uld weaponry, if you didn't count a certain weakness and a Novocain-like tingling in his back teeth. Basically, enough remaining symptom to let him indulge hedonistically in the tea and Jaffa Cakes and insist that Daniel do all the pouring for him.

"Goa'uld show up on Earth circa 8,000-6,000 BCE. With starships, probably, as they are dragging what becomes the Giza Stargate with them."

Daniel nodded. "We've pretty much confirmed from the logs of the Antarctica Gate that it was the original Earth gate, abandoned millions of years ago."

"And there you go again. I don't want to sound like Lord Kelvin here, but you keep pushing the timeline a lot further back than seems reasonable. But we digress. The Goa'uld bring concepts of centralized rule and the agricultural revolution. Which I agree are interdependent concepts. Agriculture is a communal activity in a way gatherer-hunter lifestyles are not, and the efficiency of agriculture is necessary to support specialists; artists, warriors, rulers."

"And writing," Daniel said. "Which is necessary for the management of any large community."

"Again I object — there is too much variety in progenitor writing systems — just as there is in the staple crops of early agriculture — to think a single source is responsible. But let's table that for the time being. I'm quite willing to entertain the idea that outside — literally alien — influences were behind the early societies. Even if it does smack of von Däniken and his ilk. It is just some of the timing that bothers me."

He was holding back on his guest. Alien interference in early human history wasn't just part of the thesis he'd been working at for a good fifteen years, but was something he'd seen and held tangible proof of.

"The pyramids are but one part of the problem," Alister continued. "If the Goa'uld instructed humans how to build them, why was the later Old Kingdom struggling to invent them as if they were working from scratch? If pyramids were developed when we think they were, why did Goa'uld ships have that form already?"

Daniel answered thoughtfully. "Our Samantha Carter suggests the pyramid shape is an easy framework to 'grow' a hollow-core ship around. Why they want it that way, I don't know. Sam said something about standing waves in a gravitic matrix and those are the only words I understood for the next hour. So I've got two ideas."

"Oh, hello Zip. Our other guest settled in? Oh; while you are up, could you fetch me that plate?"

Zip got up, frowning, and did that. He threw himself back in a well-stuffed leather armchair before replying. "Strange dude," he said. "I left him to amuse himself. Told him to go explore the mansion or something while you guys talked shop."

Alister gave him a silent nod. Zip was checking up on him. And on what he might be telling Daniel. He turned back to his more academically-inclined guest. "As you were saying?"

"First idea, we don't really know what early Goa'uld ships were like. They may have been quite different. Ra was the pre-eminent System Lord for thousands of years, and whatever he chose to do would put an indelible stamp on their culture."

"Plus Ra was among the first to move to human hosts," Alister said. "And controlled the source. So as Goa'uld slaves and hosts were dispersed out across the Stargate network, they were bound to carry much of the forms Ra had set with them."

"So I'm willing to admit that the Goa'uld may have borrowed from locally-grown culture and traditions," Daniel said. This was a huge admission from him, Alister sensed. He found himself wondering about the background of the other archaeologist. He had read that Daniel's parents had died when he was young, and it was just possible that he, like so many drawn to the idea of godlike aliens, was looking for an all-knowing parental substitute. Even if the Goa'uld were a poor parent indeed.

"And the other idea?"

Daniel made a a short brushing-away gesture. "Or, Cheops is thousands of years older than we thought, and humans copied the idea."

Alister took the thought further. "We've talked already about the 'Old Gods' continued to be venerated long after Ra left. So the later pyramid building, even the rest of the Giza group, might be a sort of cargo cult act. Trying to bring back the wealth and stability and certainty the gods had provided by mimicking some of their attributes."

"Or," Daniel argued, "Let's not denigrate the intelligence of our ancestors. This could be a knowing and intentional appropriation of existing symbols of power."

"Like Taharqa, that Nubian ruler of the Egyptian 25th Dynasty who had his face carved on a sphinx to show he was a proper Pharaoh? The 25th built pyramids back home, too."

He hit the cakes and tea again as he thought. Zip tried hard to look bored and uninterested instead of thoroughly confused. Zip was smart and highly educated, contrary to the streetwise image he tried to project, but he wasn't a specialist in Egyptology. Neither was Alister, come to think of it, but he'd taken the opportunity when this get-together was suggested to bone up a little.

"This connects to my other problem with language," Alister said after an interval. "You've shown examples of the decorations on Goa'uld ships. And other writing like the Abydos Gate List." He was still trying, but he couldn't help pronouncing it like the ancient city, instead of as Daniel had been using it. "But the thing is, those are clearly developed hieroglyphs. Heck, the Abydos gate addresses are enclosed in cartouche — which weren't in use before Sneferu."

He turned to Zip, who had not quite hidden his look. "Fourth Dynasty," he explained tersely. He turned back to Daniel. "Before that, royal names were enclosed in the serekh. And that's far from the only development in hieroglyphs, which continued to evolve out clear to the time of Alexander. Did the Egyptians forget how their own language worked after the Goa'uld left, and have to re-invent it over the following centuries?"

"Well, they did by the time of the Ptolmiacs," Daniel retorted. "Cleopatra's contemporaries had to carve out the Rosetta Stone just to translate from the old language to their modern Coptic." He wasn't really making an objection, though.

So Alister brought in the big guns. "And thus we come to Osiris," he said with a gleam in his eye. Daniel looked honestly confused.

"Osiris is a Greek name," Alister said. "Actually, a Latin transliteration of the Greek. It's actually pretty close, as such things go, to the original Egyptian, which I'd transliterate from the hieroglyphs as 'Wesir.' Taking the vowels from the later Coptic, of course. Zip, you probably don't know this, but for historical reasons a great many of our terms for ancient Egypt are Greek in origin. Question is…why would the _Goa'uld_ be using those pronunciations? Or are you trying to claim that for thousands of years their own slaves were getting the name wrong, and it took the Romans to stumble upon the right pronunciation?"

"The humans on Abydos called their living god 'Ra,'" Daniel objected weakly. "Even though we know the Coptic for the Egyptian sun god is 'Re.' And Teal'c, he didn't, uh, work for Apep. That Goa'uld called himself…oh, dammit. Apophis."

"Oh, just _try_ to tell me that isn't Latinate!" Alister chortled.

"I give up." Daniel threw up his hands. "Cultural diffusion flows both ways."

* * *

The Great Hall was too quiet, even with the small but cheerful fire in the massive fireplace, and the gleaming and blinking of lights and soft hum of cooling fans behind the acrylic barrier that separated Zip's "lair" from the rest of the hall. Teal'c paused, as patient in his immobility as a hunter, to take in the atmosphere and admire the decor, before moving to one of the doors.

Something puzzled him about the painting over the fireplace. The couple there: older but surprisingly fit. The man had that focused look of an accomplished warrior, and the woman had in her high well-defined cheekbones a clear genetic link to Lady Croft's more strongly-sculpted exoticism. Obviously her ancestors, but something had caught his eye. Something that seemed out of place.

When further examination revealed nothing he shrugged with just the slightest controlled ripple of his well-muscled shoulders. Then picked a door at random.

The hallway he found was in warm brown stones with massive pillars like a fortified house. Woven tapestries hung in the spaces between them, and the light was muted, filtered through tall stained-glass windows along one side of the L-bend. Soft music came from hidden speakers; a delicate, rippling ostinato on piano and various sorts of pitched percussion. Teal'c found it quite soothing.

Completing that long hall and pulling open a massive wooden door, he found himself at an indoor pool. The room was mostly stone and tile with light coming through a glass conservatory roof. Along the sides were statuary, female warriors behind Trojan war shields, spears stretched out over the sparkling clear water, and strange fish-creatures with broadly flared tails. There was a mezzanine level behind a classical balustrade, but no obvious access to it from the ground floor.

Striped curtains hung in front of semi-open changing rooms paneled in polished wood. The Jaffa warrior left those alone. His eye was caught by slight but unmistakable scrapes in the floor near one of the seemingly massive stone fish. There was a convenient wooden rod affixed to the plinth, looking like but in the wrong place to be a support for someone discovering wet tiles with bare feet.

Teal'c shrugged again, wrapped his hands around the rod and pulled. The statue slid across the floor with unexpected ease. Behind it, in an alcove now revealed, crossed as if on display at a Museum of Ancient Arms, were a shiny and practical-looking classical trident — and an extremely modern spear gun.

"Curiouser and curiouser," the big man said.

* * *

"So, Carter, tell me honest. Are you making these calls just to write up a proper report for your General, or is it because you like talking with me?"

"Who said it had to be one or the other?" Carter replied. "So. Cargo cults, eh? That's a good one. Feynman popularized the term. I mean, outside of anthropology. So what did they come up with after that?"

"Well, around dinner they finally settled down to trying to figure out what this Horus dude had been getting up to since Ra left the planet. Khasekhemwy, Alister said then. I said, what's a Khasekhemwy. Alister said 'about five or six stone.'"

Carter laughed aloud at this. She had a warm laugh, Zip decided. Self-assured, even controlled. Not like the shrieks and giggles of some women. Like at least one he'd recently been dating. Enough of that. "Anyhow, turns out there was kind of a fight between Horus worshippers and Set worshippers and this Khasy guy seems to have smoothed things over. His serekh — that's like a cartouche only different — had both gods on it instead of the one."

"You know what cartouche comes from, right?" Carter mentioned. "Cartridge. Napoleon's men came up with the term while they were kicking around Egypt figuring out how to bring some of it back with them."

"Yeah, and we've still got all kinds of troubles about the Elgin Marbles. Makes you feel sorry for the curators at the British Museum."

"So the Brain Trust thinks this is evidence of Horus trying to guide Egyptian civilization, and fighting off and on with former supporters of Ra…or other System Lords trying to cut themselves a slice of the Tau'ri pie?"

"Yeah, something like that. Not sure it's going to help. I mean, we _know_ there were ancient aliens giving out all sorts of trinkets. Doesn't help us much in discovering their motivations."

Carter became more serious. "You seem oddly certain for someone to whom all this stuff about the Stargate is strictly second-hand," she said.

"Yeah, about that." Zip still wasn't ready to tell all. Nor, he was very sure, was Carter and the organization behind her being entirely forthcoming. Even if Daniel Jackson seemed personally incapable of keeping a secret. "Lemme just say, Carter, that I've seen things. I've seen things you wouldn't believe."

"Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion?"

Zip's jaw dropped. "C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate," he said. "Damn, Carter. You've got geek creds! And you a hacker, too?"

"Back in the day," she told him, "I went by the handle Acid Burn."

"Whew!" Zip said, "You…wait a minute. Oh, now you are just messing with me!" He started to laugh.

"It's a seminal movie that helped shaped popular conceptions of hacker culture," Carter said. Then cracked up. "I kid. Can I tell you how much I love that movie? It's so bad…!" She turned semi-serious. "Actually, though, it doesn't do a bad job in depicting the Phone Phreak era."

"_WarGames_ did it better."

"I assure you, Zip, any Professor Falken working for us does _not_ get access to an outside line."

"Yeah, you don't want some Mathew Broderick playing Tic Tac Toe on your Dialing Computer."

"Um…among other things."

"So," Zip said thoughtfully. "You are connecting from home. Does that mean you aren't recording this?"

Carter didn't answer.

* * *

The next morning, Zip showed up at the target range still blinking sleep from his eyes. "I see you found something lighter…but what _is_ that thing?" Winston looked on, amused. "It looks like something that came off a sci-fi- movie set." The weapon in question was aggressively angled with a smoothly tapered curve almost to the muzzle. It was shiny, with white grips; all adding to the space-age appearance.

"Whitney Wolverine," Alister named it.

"A semi-automatic in .22 LR from 1956," Winston expanded.

"You would not _believe_ the guns Lord Croft had in his collection," Alister added. "This one's cast aluminium. Cool-looking, isn't it?"

"Wait, wolverine? Like, _Wolverines!_" He said the last in an approximation of a rebel yell.

Alister blinked. "Yes, like the member of the weasel family. Which, I believe, is often used as a mascot by the Yanks in that pansy game they insist on calling 'football.'"

"Not what I meant — ah, forget it. If I had to explain it, it wouldn't have the impact."

* * *

"I've been thinking about those Goa'uld of yours," Alister said. They'd moved from the library; for no good reason Daniel could see they were currently in Zip's "batcave" of electronics. It felt comfortingly familiar to Daniel. Although he did have an apartment off-post, it did seem like he spent most of his waking hours in the steel-lined tunnels deep below the mountain, filled with similarly blinking and beeping technology. Not exactly the life he expected when he began studying archaeology. Or even the life he expected when he stumbled upon what had seemed at the time clear evidence the Giza pyramids were much older than anyone had thought.

"So the idea is that myths, the stories and oral traditions that have come down to us through the ages, may be garbled accounts of actual events. I think this denigrates the intelligence and creativity of our ancestors; it substitutes the skills of a story-teller with a gape-mouthed misunderstanding of what was happening in front of their eyes. But anyhow! One of the many incidents that springs to mind is a story from the _Book of the Heavenly Cow_."

"Hathor," Daniel said with a sour look.

"In synopsis, humans are rising in rebellion against Ra — sound familiar? — and he sends Hathor to punish them. She gets a little _too_ into it, basically goes genocidal, and refuses to be called back. After consultation with the other gods Ra makes up a batch of beer dyed to look like blood and spreads it on the ground. Hathor licks it up, falls over in a dead drunk, and humanity is saved."

"Yeah, I can see it," Daniel agreed. "As I told you earlier, the Goa'uld going by that name was a sensualist and a skilled geneticist. Mother goddess and genocidal killer in one package. And I like the beer angle."

"Of course," Alister grinned. "Beer. Possibly the real spark that ignited the agricultural revolution. For without an organized society, you can't brew. With beer, though, you've got a ready-made ritual _and_ a way to make the local water potable. That's half of the tools of an agrarian society right there. Beer; the true genesis of civilization!"

"I'll drink to that!" Zip said. He didn't turn, though, from where he was writing code or sending emails or whatever he was doing on his massed banks of computers and monitors.

"And kind of you not to point out," Daniel's tone was biting, "That the text you mention came out of the _Amarna_ period. Hathor herself was poorly defined right through the Old Kingdom; it isn't until later that the full regalia of horns and sun disk, sistrum and ankh and all that comes together."

"Ah, but she's already a cow on the Narmer Palette," Alister grinned.

"So, yes, it certainly sounds like our Goa'uld. Ra is burning for revenge, Hathor genetically engineers a plague, but plans change and she has to be tricked out of finishing us off. But I agree with your underlying point, Alister. It is too easy to decide that this one interpretation of an old myth or an ambiguous image is the right one, and let yourself be blind to all other interpretations."

"Like seeing the King Pakal sarcophagus lid carving as an astronaut in a space capsule?"

"Oh, now, that was just cruel!"

"So maybe no Seven Plagues." Zip entered the conversation Apparently he _had_ been listening. He held up a hand, "Hey now. I know that's a _lot_ later. But I'm still pretty confused over the whole Ra thing."

Daniel took this one. "The uprising was around 3,000 BCE. You have to remember, as powerful as Goa'uld or Jaffa may be individually, there were a lot more Helots than there were Spartans. Err, which is to say a slave revolt is possible. On Abydos, Ra tried to prevent another one from being organized by banning writing. Which gave us a difficult time trying to figure out the gate code to get back home but that's another story!"

"I follow so far," Zip said. "And they bury the Giza Stargate so he can't come back that way. And then what?"

"Well, this is where the historical record is extremely sketchy. For all that we know about Ancient Egypt, the first three dynasties are largely a mystery. Even the lists of kings we have mostly come to us from later efforts — like the Palermo Stone chiseled up early in the Fifth Dynasty — to make some sort of record of their origins. First ruler we are relatively sure of is King Narmer, but even he may be a composite character, or a representation of a process of unification that took several generations."

"I've even seen it argued that the Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt aren't actually that; that on the Narmer Pallet they represent different roles of the King; civic versus religious, for instance," Alister chimed in. "We're not even sure Narmer is a proper name. I mean, think about Djet, the Serpent of Horus. Another name that sure sounds meaningful, eh? And we can't possibly forget King Scorpion."

"I'll take the Palermo Stone over the Scorpion Mace-head," Daniel scowled. "In any case, for all appearances our Horus was working to smooth the transition into local rule. It was probably bloody — politics usually are, particularly the politics of the Ancient World — but there's nothing here we can take to the Asgard. I think we need to hunt for a smoking gun a little later on."

"Wait…." Zip was looking from one to the other, stuck several words back. "Scorpion? There's a Scorpion King?"

"That's another interesting thought, though," Alister mused. "Serpents. There's serpent gods, serpent cults, serpent men even, in mythologies across the world and right up to the present. Makes you wonder if there's a Goa'uld symbiote behind any of them." Daniel had given him the gist of the story of the Worm of Marienberg (he assumed that Lara Croft would have briefed her assistants about the Prague adventure in any case).

Daniel sighed. "Not really helping. And we're still no closer to figuring out where your boss went, either."

* * *

The first find of the day was shortly after breakfast. More doors, more long halls of muted lighting; daylight filtered through sheer lace curtains of French cotton and tiny accent lights on the hanging paintings and some of the smaller antiques. More soft music, although this had a wind instrument added that made Teal'c think of his home village on Chulak.

And another high-ceilinged room, natural light through an industrial-looking roof of flat glass panels set in exposed steel framing; a look that went with the unpainted cement walls and highly varnished wood floor. It was obviously a gym, even without the thick blue mats that spotted the floor, and the gymnastic equipment that stood about. Multiple panels of sculpted fake rock were attached to the walls, multicolored plastic rocks bolted to those in turn. Teal'c had heard of this. It was an indoor climbing wall.

He was no climber. Jaffa strengths were wasted in aerial gymnastics; they were most dangerous on level ground. But he could certainly do calisthenics here. Which he did, then showered in the convenient adjoining facility. There were even sweats in the changing room. In his size. He recalled questioning Daniel Jackson upon their first night here, when he had discovered his room apportioned with sufficient candles to be conducive for a night's kelno'reem.

"Butlers," Daniel Jackson had said, with a shrug. "English Butlers," he expanded when Teal'c continued to look at him. "They're magic."

Suitably refreshed, Teal'c continued his exploration. He found a hall with a checkerboard floor where swords and axes and other bladed weapons were arranged in abstract patterns high on the walls. They were of excellent craftsmanship, if archaic in style, and seemed to cover a variety of cultures.

Full suits of armor stood sentry. One had the sliding metal plates and the tall helm he had been taught to associate with the (overly romanticized, as far as the Jaffa could tell) conception of the European "Knight," another was in segmented hoops over a red tunic and was displayed with a short broad-bladed sword and a long stabbing spear — Teal'c believed this might be a "Roman."

Another appeared to be made out of plant fibers but was gorgeously painted; that was presented complete with a what appeared to be a mahogany club with bits of obsidian forced into its striking surfaces. The last, in this gallery at least, was a suit of close-spaced plates woven together with silk cord in intricate patterns and topped with a wonderful helmet that looked like someone had taken Darth Vader's and added a towering pair of horns. It was presented on a low stand of lacquered wood.

Facing across from these were two framed paintings and an unframed print. One showed a steep, rocky hillside that looked quite peaceful until one noticed that the clumps of dull green were men crawling purposefully upwards, pressed tightly to the rock; trying to move upwards against what Teal'c assumed must be snipers on the heights. The title was as opaque to the Jaffa; "Anzac, 1915."

On the other side, what was perhaps an Indian prince, bare-chested, sat with legs crossed, eyes closed in meditation. Behind him the muddy ground torn by many horse hooves suggested a battlefield lay around him, but any detail was lost in the smoke. This one was titled "Ashoka at Kalinga."

The central image was small, probably a commissioned reproduction of a larger work. It was proportioned like a mural and painted only in shades of grey. There was no title or identification. It was bold, almost geometric in the stark simplicity of the forms. Near the center the head of a horse rose, screaming, tendons standing out, from flames and bits of building and bits of bodies. A bull in the upper left corner looked on, inscrutably.

The Jaffa moved on. The next interesting room was a small sitting room with an extremely comfortable and well-used chair that smelled even decades later of old tobacco smoke. Yellowing papers were spread out on a side-table, held in place by the expedient pin of a jeweled and extremely sharp-looking Malay kris that stabbed down through them. Books were on shelves set into the wood-paneled walls, prominence given to several with the same name appearing on the spine; the name probably related to that which was under a portrait of a powerfully-built older man with mutton-chop whiskers that hung in the place of honor over the white marble fireplace; "Colonel Lord "Hennie" Croft, 9th Earl of Abbingdon."

Teal'c did not go inside. The room was preserved, like a shrine, as the person in the portrait would have known it. He could just read from the door the title on two books that shared the end-table; "My Youth in China; a Personal Account of the Siege of the Legations," and "Five Treasures of Snow; the First International Attempt to Summit Kangchenjunga." It was clear that Lady Croft's ancestors shared her love of world travel and adventure.

Teal'c turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with a striking painting in vivid, primitive colors of a fierce beast, striped body rearing and red mouth framed with large white teeth. Through another opening the terminus for various doorways and passages was decorated enough to almost make a small gallery on its own. Another of the delicate-looking chairs with the curving legs and fabric-covered oval backs. Another end table, holding a vase in white porcelain painted with a delicate spray of cherry blossoms. A framed page from a book of poetry, hand-lettered and illustrated, and on a sturdy display plinth, a chunk of stone carved with the bas-relief of marching warriors with wicker shields and cloth caps. "Persepolis," a tiny bronze plate attached to the plinth read.

Teal's stopped to read the poem. "Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

Teal'c had no idea. He turned to leave, but then on impulse turned at the door. He was almost edge-on to the stone carving, and from this angle he could see how each soldier stood so far out in their bas-relief from the surface it was if they were lining up in formation before him. One eye of each looked fearlessly back at his.

The big man pondered. Then he returned to the stone. It was real stone, and heavy, but it pivoted so smoothly it was obviously on a hidden pin. Carefully, he swiveled it until the alignment of the ancient warriors had them giving the eye to the jungle beast in the other room.

With a soft click the entire painting rose up into the air on a set of hidden tracks, uncovering the dark shape of a hidden doorway. "Aha!" Teal'c said. Around him, the music from the hidden speakers changed to a new key.

* * *

"So we're going to have to make this short tonight," Carter said.

"Are you going out?" Zip was disappointed. Actually, if he wanted to be honest with himself, he was feeling a little twinge of jealousy.

"Going to the opera," Carter said. "Fledermaus."

"Oh?"

"Sorry, private joke. Actually, it is a more modern work, by Janáček. _The Makropulos Affair_. Set in Prague, which is kinda cool."

"Well, the guys are basically stalling out. At least Teal'c seems to be enjoying himself. He asked me all serious like if I knew there were secrets in this house. I told him, a lot of old English homes have a Priest Hole. This one, you could hide the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."

Carter chuckled shortly. "I would have enjoyed watching you try to explain all that to him."

"So they did come up with some more dirt on Hathor. Not that any was needed, from what I gather." Zip succinctly recapped the discussion of her possible dalliance with genocide.

"Well, I may have some news over here," Carter said. "I'll tell everyone about it soon — I think this is going to excite Daniel. No time to get into detail, but I've been keeping in touch with the Remote Sensing Group and one of Felgar's castles in the sky actually panned out. In the sky. I mean, they managed to put a naquada…sorry, my ride's here!"

And she logged out.

* * *

This morning Alister had a real antique with him. Winston watched approvingly as he cleared the weapon, inspected it, donned the ear muffs and shooter's glasses, and waited for Zip to be similarly ready in his lane.

Zip was coming along well. He was a natural shot, with a wiry strength that helped him control even the heavier guns. Alister, on the other hand, had grown in a different direction.

"Okay," Zip burst out. "What the hell _is_ that?" He squinted. "Some kind of old Luger?"

"Right time period, wrong nation," Alister said smugly. "Nambu Type 14. Japanese 8mm, developed between the wars. This one's an early manufacture, as you can tell by the grooved cocking handle. The stamps are worn but it's probably out of Koishikawa. The late war builds were basically crap, and the Type 94 was even worse — especially the suicide sear."

"Oh, no," Zip said in dawning horror. Alister proceeded to fire the thing with evident enjoyment. His pattern was far from tight, but that was obviously less important to him. He'd leveraged all that skill in listing and classifying obscure archaeological artifacts. He was turning into a…a _gun collector._

* * *

"So what about Cyrus the Great? He was a heck of a do-gooder. Nice role for someone trying to kiss up to the Asgard."

"Or Ashoka the Great," Daniel answered. "Except he got off to a really, really bad start. Actually, pretty much every historic ruler that gets 'The Great' attached to them was basically a mass murderer."

"A gentleman in Oregon I've corresponded with calls them 'Historical Arsonists.'" Alister agreed. "He particularly disagreed with the lionization of Alexander."

"Not Horus' style, anyhow," Daniel said. "Goa'uld arrogance and ambition aside, the fact that he was pushing his 'Tears of Horus' is one more indication that he preferred to be the power behind the throne. A manipulator, not a ruler himself."

"Rasputin would be a good one, if he wasn't so late in history," Alister said. "Talk about supernatural healing powers!"

"At that point you might as well be arguing for the Comte de Saint Germain," Daniel snorted.

"So Imhotep looks pretty good. Advisor to the throne, advances in architecture, medicine — he was a true polymath. Even the way he 'let' himself be worshipped as a god later on. But is there a reason we're sticking to the Fertile Crescent? What about, say, Mesoamerica?"

"Oh, _please_ tell me you aren't going to bring up Viracocha. You might as well go the whole Atlantis route then."

"No, of course not. I know the 'bearded white god' thing was cooked up by Pizarro and his apologizers. But I'm surprised," Alister took another sip of tea, replaced the cup, "you dismiss Atlantis so completely."

"Look, I know it's the tradition if you buy into one conspiracy theory, you buy into all of them. Just because I had some ideas about pre-dynastic Egypt that don't agree with the mainstream didn't mean I signed on for every pseudo-historical crackpot idea out there. Alister, even though I know, now, that there were aliens masquerading as gods in ancient Egypt, I still think the Nazca lines are sacred geoglyphs, the moai were carved and set up by the Rapa Nui people and King Pakal is depicted on the World Tree framed by the jaws of a funerary serpent. Oh, yeah, and _Hamlet_ was written by some guy named William Shakespeare."

Alister laughed. "You do a good rant, Daniel." He put aside the tea, settled back, steepled his hands. "I'm still surprised. You yourself said there's often a germ of truth in every myth. What about the idea some people have put forward that the Atlantis story is rooted in the Thera volcanic eruption in the Aegean, towards the end of the Minoan civilization?"

"What idea?" Daniel was still short. "It isn't in the Atlantic, didn't rule the world, and isn't called Atlantis. It's like those modern theories of King Arthur that link him to someone who wasn't King, wasn't in England, and wasn't named Arthur. So what's the point? Why even call it Atlantis if you are going to throw away everything else Plato says about it?"

"Well, at least in the Minoan case you can more-or-less argue that Athenians whipped their butts. Although they were far from the Perfect Republic Plato was talking about. And there's the whole problem of Solon getting the story from some Egyptian priests nobody has ever heard of."

"That, and his Atlantis was a wee bit larger than North America," Daniel said. "Not a tiny island near Crete." He stopped and shook his head. "And it is so clear that Plato is telling a just-so story as part of a thought experiment. We're no more meant to believe it than we are meant to believe Lemuel Gulliver actually set foot on a flying island. The social commentary — or moral instruction — is what is important."

Alister grinned for a moment. "One thing that always amuses me is how all the modern version of the Atlantis myth get that one thing wrong. In Plato, they aren't the good guys. They're the Evil Empire."

Daniel sighed in agreement. "Sure, you've got your odd Reptillians and your Shaver Mysteries, but yeah, most of the modern versions of these myths the space aliens are coming to bring humanity into a new utopia of peace and harmony and chemical-free living."

"Would make it rather convenient for a Goa'uld stopping by today for a fresh set of slaves."

"That's an…interesting thought, Alister. I'm going to pass that one along." Daniel looked across the book-strewn table at him. "You've got a nicely paranoid and suspicious mind."

"Thank you," Alister said, flustered. "I have to be. I'm working for Lara Croft, and I'd like to stay alive long enough to actually finish my dissertation!"

Teal'c strolled past, coming from the rear of the library. "Daniel Jackson," he nodded in greeting. "Mister Alister." He continued out the door without stopping. He seemed to be humming a quiet tune under his breath.

"Was he back there the whole time?" Daniel asked.

"I don't think so," Alister said. "Say, I hope he doesn't try that 'Mister' stuff on Zip. He hates being called 'Mister Zip.' Says it makes him feel like a Sidney Poitier character."

"Anyhow," said Daniel, "Atlantis, which sort of spawns Mu, which gets associated with Lemuria, which all get folded into the general Ancient Astronaut/Hollow Earth/Bermuda Triangle/Ley Line mish-mash. Oh, Lemuria at least has an honorable excuse; like Frisland, it started through poor science, but at least, someone was _trying_ to do science."

"I think I remember. Early work in biogeography. They found lemurs on two continents, couldn't figure out how they got there, so invented a land bridge the size of the Indian Ocean. They were so close, but this was before Wegener and plate tectonics and the general acceptance of continental drift. But you sound like you really don't like Mu."

Daniel sighed. "I doubled in Egyptology and in Linguistics. Ancient languages as a focus. So I guess I'm sensitive. The whole Mu story basically starts with Diego de Landa, the Bishop of Yucatán."

"The butcher of Yucatán, more like it," Alister grimaced. "The Spanish didn't need anyone spreading the Black Legend against them; he pretty much did all of it. Torture and murder and destruction all in the name of conversion of the Maya to Catholicism."

"And that's the horribly ironic thing about it," Daniel said. "He also provides some of the greatest early studies of Maya culture and the best clue to later deciphering of the Maya glyphs. He was like a pioneer anthropologist. He'd go out alone to small villages and live among the Maya, learning their ways — in order to learn the best way to wipe them out."

He stopped himself and had some tea. His hand was actually shaking with anger. "Back to Mu," he said. "Before he burnt the Mayan Codices, he got the help of a couple of priests to work out their alphabet. First mistake. Maya glyphs are a logogram, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, not an alphabet." Daniel had more tea. "Second mistake was that from accounts he conducted this exercise in _Spanish_, meaning poor transliteration of anything that was allophonic in that language."

"Sounds like a bit of work to get that all straight, then."

"Yes, apparently it was. We can read the Maya glyphs now, at least. But go back to the 19th century. Next person of importance in the story is Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg and he really should have known better. The man actually published a study on the grammar of the Maya language of Guatemala, several histories of Central America, and a translation of the _Popol Vuh_. He was also an Atlantis nut, so maybe that explains why, when he applied the ridiculous 'de Landa Alphabet' to the Troano Codex (one of the few that escaped the bonfires of de Landa's auto-da-fé), he didn't immediately realize his translation was spitting out sheer nonsense. Stuff like, '...master of the upheaved calabash...' if I remember any of it correctly."

"So he invents Mu."

"A little bit of it. It took Augustus Le Plongeon, a writer and photographer who recorded many Pre-Columbian ruins which otherwise have not survived to the present day, to flesh out the bones. Which he did from a background of Maya-ism — the belief that Atlantis was the source culture of the Maya and ancient Egypt — his own travels in the Yucatán, and for all I know his connections with Freemasonary to come up with a long and complicated history of Mu, complete with princesses and doomed romances and all that. Apparently he'd read some of these accounts to friends at house parties, with his wife accompanying on guitar."

"And now we have the Hitler — sorry, 'History' Channel for entertainment. _plus ça change, plus c'est la même._"

"And finally 'Colonel' Churchward — if there's anything these pseudo-historians love, it's titles — wrote the whole mess up and padded it out into a dozen-odd books."

"Churchward I know," Alister said. He forbade to mention his own lifelong fascination with Atlantis. "He claimed to have done the research himself, working from a set of clay tablets an old soldier gave to him. Probably from the same cave that Joseph Smith got his golden plates. One interesting bit is that Churchward associated the King of Mu — which back several versions ago was supposed to also be the figure behind the Mayan Chacmool — with the Egyptian god Ra."

Daniel laughed shortly. "Which puts us back full circle, doesn't it?"

"This calls for beer," Alister said, working his way up from the deep slump he'd been seated in. "I'm going to see if Zip is still up, too. Oh, he's going to love the obscure handgun I picked out for tomorrow's get-together. You should join us at the range, Daniel."

"I see enough shooting in my day job," Daniel complained. "See if you can find Teal'c, too. He's good company once you get to know him. Deep, too. You would not believe how deep he is."

* * *

Teal'c could hear the blood roaring behind his ears. His symbiote helped, but the underwater passage between rooms was rather long. He swam a little more vigorously. "Vaster than empires, but more slow," had led him to the emerald key, but getting to it required getting inside a gated section of the greenhouse. At least it beat solving the ruby key, which had started from a fragment of a very strange book by someone named Baum and required stacking far too many gold disks of different diameters on a trio of pylons.

He pulled himself dripping from the water at last, touched the key and was rewarded with the soft chime of its activation. He'd already solved the clue embedded in "Hear, how yon reed in sadly pleasing tales," and the sapphire key would take but another hour to complete.

And that's when he heard a noise.

* * *

Alister was ten paces from the nearer of the several kitchens when a burly man clad head to toe in black slammed him to the ground.

He caught the glitter of metal, weapons and other things. An attack, part of his mind processed while the rest was still trying to catch up. Armed men were in the mansion. It wouldn't be the first time.

"I, uh, I…" he mumbled, trying to get his breath.

"Shut up," the man said. He pulled a laminated image from a pocket on the front of his battledress. "The stone," the man snarled. "Show me where this stone is and maybe you will live out the night."

Alister recognized the image instantly, and his next word sounded like a curse. "_Amanda!_"


	21. Chapter 20: The Battle of Abbingdon

I don't even this chapter. I ran way over the word count on the last and it kicked the action scene to here. Where it gave me just endless trouble. At least I managed to (mostly) resist the temptation to pepper everything with "begorrah" and "Ach a fi!"

If there is a point being made in this one, it is that fighting has consequences. So a general warning, too, that things are about to turn a wee bit more bloody.

* * *

Abbingdon Estate, Surrey, 51.15°N 0.25°W

* * *

"Damn," Zip said. Skype wasn't loading right. He poked at the settings. He was a little distracted — he was looking forward to his nightly call to Carter, more than he quite understood why.

Oh, there it was. No valid connection. WIFI was strong — had the house system logged him out? He opened up another terminal and typed a few "whoami's" to figure out which user he was being at the moment. Keychain issue? Maybe try logging in manually?

The open beer was distracting him. He drank some of it. Now, was this a hardware issue? No, wait…he was seeing the router fine, and the connection with the house system was up. Damn NT Server crashed again? He cursed the incautious moment he'd let a salesman talk him into trying a pre-packaged rack for Athena-1. And his own laziness in not migrating back to Linux and something that was the _right_ kind of "patchy." (Apache, that is.)

So, fine. If he worked fast, he could reboot the house server and get connected back to the world before Carter went away. His fingers flew, muscle memory alone enough to guide them in SSH'ing in, bringing up the diagnostics panel, and…

"Now, that's funny," Zip said aloud.

If he didn't have such an oddball, hand-rolled system he might not have figured it out even then. Someone had spoofed the system into thinking it still had an outside line. Right at the cable terminus, it looked like, and Zip was willing to bet it was sending a heartbeat the other way to keep the alarm company from realizing the entire house had been cut off.

"Aw, hell no." Zip swore softly. Then he started running.

* * *

Bob watched the members of his team spread out with decidedly mixed emotions. He had reservations about the approach they were taking. He had reservations about several members of the team.

The two were not unconnected.

See, that was the problem in working with mercenaries. You couldn't just give them orders. Although they'd never put it that way, they thought of themselves less as soldiers and more like private contractors, and as such they had opinions. So you had to convince them that yours were better.

And this bunch was enthralled enough with the idea of an infiltration approach Bob had been forced to let them take it. He favored shock and awe himself. Keep together, enter fast, move through the house like a wave sweeping up everything before them. Infiltration had an honorable history; a relatively recent development in warfare, the technical meaning was breaking up your formations and sending men across individually to filter through and thus bypass an enemy's front lines.

That wasn't what his men were thinking, however. Basically, they thought they were the goddamn Batman.

The problem started with the location. The objective was in the Home Counties, less than an hour's drive from Number 10 Downing its own self, and in this post 9-11 world (as the calendarically-confused Yanks insisted on putting it), that was a very bad place to be letting loose with automatic weapons.

Add to that the nature of the place's owner. You'd be better off, Bob mused, attacking the Berkside digs of Sir Elton John. Lady Croft was a bit less famous, but was several times more wealthy — and held an actual hereditary peerage to boot. Shooting up the home of one of her barely two dozen remaining Earls and Countesses was unlikely to amuse the Queen.

And that was the other emotion that was trying to gain primacy. This was Lara Croft's home. The woman who had killed more than one of his brothers in the loose but very much there world-wide fraternity of the mercenary. Who had seemingly slaughtered dozens who had been with Rutland when he was unwise enough to challenge her in Bolivia.

Intel said the mistress of the house was far from here. And that was good. Because he was going to want bigger guns if and when he got a chance to go up against the woman herself. For now, taking out some of her people would do. It wasn't revenge that drove him. Well, not just revenge. Bob felt some obscure obligation to the profession that told him she should not be allowed to do that. Mostly, though, it was the attraction of a challenge. She was good, probably better than Bob, but win or lose it was bound to be the best fight he ever had.

And he'd do it. He'd do this. Even if it meant he'd spend the next decade looking over his shoulder. Because every man here tonight was going to be high on a terrorist watch list for the rest of their natural lives.

Well, he didn't think any of his new team were high right now, but he'd most certainly ended up with mostly those too stupid or too desperate to take the consequences seriously. But then, hadn't Tony Callan gotten his start when he tried to strong-arm a bank — while he was still serving in the Paras? Bob, at least, had earned his honorable discharge. And that put him one up on experience in an actual military unit on pretty much everyone he had with him tonight.

They were, in short, trainspotters. Anorak-wearing _Soldier of Fortune_ reading gun-fondling wanna-be's. And that's why they took the client at her word that the place was defended by only "one aged relic of a butler and two geeks who do research and tech support," dressed up in their finest SWAT black and surplus Russian NVG's, and set out to ninja their way in.

Bob had ordered them to stay in teams and stay in contact. Because they had arms and surprise on their side, but splitting up your forces always invited the opportunity for a defeat in detail. Or, in the more technical terminology the Regiment had drummed into him, for a total cock-up.

He turned to the one other professional he had, the only man remaining from his first hand-picked team. Who wasn't a soldier by any means, but could be trusted to follow orders and otherwise do the sensible thing. "Okay, Craig," Bob said, "If you, the Master of Unlocking, are ready, it's time to move on to the Tech Center."

* * *

Taff was having a _good_ day. The client's money had bought him the kit he dreamed of, his mates were a good bunch (even if the ex Regulars were a little snooty), and now he was out there in the world doing the job. Armed to the teeth and bad to the bone and now he had target sighted.

He took a step back from the thickly paneled wooden door. "On three," he murmured to his buddy. Then the moment of action; he slammed open the door with his boot, charged through, swiveled to cover what was inside.

Library, looked like. A scrawny fellow with dust-mop hair and nerd glasses looked up from where he was sprawled on a sofa, surprised.

"Right!" Taff said. He racked the action of his Mossberg with a flourish. "Don't you dare…"

His voice trailed off. Because the next moments were education in the difference between being trained and having _experience._

* * *

Daniel Jackson was not a trained soldier. In point of fact, Colonel O'Neill had declared him basically untrainable. He had, however, been shot at a _lot_ in the past few years. That tiny opening when the shotgun was being cycled was enough for his well-honed instincts to send him over the back of the couch.

He was aware, vaguely, of the difference between soft cover and hard cover. Even if he wouldn't use that terminology himself. But that same instinct told him he was better off behind something than behind nothing at all.

"Come out of there!" a voice yelled.

"Why?" Daniel yelled back.

That apparently flustered the man. Once again, Daniel wasn't acting according to script. At last the attacker figured out how to respond. "Come out or I'll shoot you right through that sofa!"

Daniel didn't reply to that.

"One!" the man shouted. "Two! Three!" Then he shot, aiming for center of macassar.

The results were spectacular, but probably not what he had intended. Daniel had already dropped flat. Feathers flew, a cloud of dust went into the air and the hot metal and gasses of the blast went right over his back as he threw himself underneath the couch.

The abused piece of furniture tipped over as if in slow motion as Daniel rose up under the coffee table and made a grab for the relic they had been recently discussing. The man was just standing there, looking to see what effect his first shot had had, when Daniel's far-too-practiced fingers found the studs to deploy and fire the zat.

* * *

Blue-white light and a sound like an Nintendo GameCube getting kicked over came from inside the room. Paddy held back. He was even less experienced than Taff — he was the youngest of the team — but he was much more cautious.

He fumbled at his radio. "Colonel, we have contact!" he stage-whispered. "Contact, Roger, over! Taff got hit with some kind of ray gun." The Welshman hadn't made a sound since the light and sound show. "I think he's down. I mean, man down, sir!"

He hoped Dai wasn't dead. The man was his best pal here. Not like those Regimental bastards, who couldn't even be arsed to, as they put it, "memorize yet another Jones." Calling him "Taff," indade!

"Hold for reinforcement," the order came tersely in reply. "We're clearing room by room. Do not let them get past you."

"Hold here. Got it," Paddy said. "Roger over and out."

* * *

Ray guns, eh? Jock wasn't sure how seriously he took that. He had an athlete's disdain for nerds, though, and he wouldn't put it past them to have kitted out with some sort of science-fiction crap.

He didn't bother replying to the radio, any more than he'd bothered trying to find another of suitable skill level to accompany him. He worked better alone. It was a careless partner, in fact, that had put short his promising career in the Scottish Transport Regiment, along with a much-more-promising trade in everything he could divert from the supplies he had been responsible for.

And if the pencil-neck he had at the other end of his G3 was as useful as he appeared, he was going to find the trinket himself — and make his own deal with their client for its return. The other mercenaries were merely an impediment.

"Talk," he said in a softly menacing voice. "Where's the Stone?"

"Usually at Edinburg Castle," his prisoner replied. He was overdressed for a night in, in a big-lapeled, calfskin loafer Eurotrash way. Long hair, too; he lacked only a soul patch to be perfect. As he was catching his breath, a fruity Public School accent was coming on.

"Ha ha." He moved the barrel just out of line, and gave the man a nice tap with it. "No stalling. I saw how you reacted to the picture I showed you."

The man yelped softly. He was going to have some good lumps in the morning. Assuming Jock let him see it. "I'm not sure," he gulped, "I'm not sure exactly where it is."

"Then we'll start at the place you're sure of and work from there. Up!" Jock prodded, then took a step back.

His prisoner pulled himself to his feet, wincing. "I'll need my keys," he said warily. "In my room."

"Of course," Jock said with false heartiness.

The manor was amazing. Despite his air of easy confidence, Jock had to admit to himself that it was a little overwhelming. The place was like a fancy hotel. No, like one of those really old-fashioned museums; not the big concrete ones where everything was track lighting and acrylic, but one of the stodgy ones with flocked wallpaper and gilding and bric-a-brac everywhere.

Well, okay, that was a bad analogy too. It had taste, taste like some of the homes in those glossy magazines.

It was also big. Really big. Jock had to wonder how many cleaners and other servants needed to come through here every week. Fortunately none of them lived on premises.

And for all the Ming vases (or whatever — Jock wasn't an art expert) the place was also fixed up with ultra-modern accessories. Wall terminals, a little coffee nook was outfitted with the gleaming chrome of automatic expresso makers and the like, and the nerd's room opened with a touch of his hand to a sensor plate.

Jock let him rummage, not allowing himself to be distracted by the piles of books and manuscripts and the odd art object hanging on the walls or being used as a paperweight. He knew there was a trick coming on. The nerd was just the sort to think he could pull one of those lame stunts like out of the movies. And then Jock would shoot him.

* * *

"This is a call from," the voice on the phone changed to a clearly different recording, "Iridium Satellite LLC," and then changed back to the previous operator, "Will you accept the charges?"

Air Force Major Samatha Carter thought very quickly. She had — almost in spite of the cover story she had been forced to use with friends and family — a good background in deep space telemetry and with ordinary terrestrial satellite communications as well. The Iridium corporation had a constellation of 66 communications satellites (they'd intended 77, hence the name) in six different low Earth orbital planes, giving subscribers to the system a world-wide coverage for voice and data.

Getting a call from that network was sufficiently intriguing by itself, but it was also an asset very much in character for Lara Croft — or her assistants.

"Yes," she said. There was a brief spate of intriguing hand-shake tones, then the caller was connected.

"I'm sorry for this." It was Zip's voice. He sounded out of breath. "Found one of Lara's old headsets up in her room, didn't have a current subscription on it, had to go through the Arizona office and convince them to put me on anyhow…"

"Zip, what's happened?"

"Attackers in the mansion. They cut off the rest of our communications. Not sure how many there are but I heard gunshots coming from the East wing."

An attack? In Surrey? "Zip, who are they?"

"No idea. You know the kind of trouble Lara gets into. Could be cultists convinced she has their idol, professional rivals, thieves, crooks, the undead, angry gods. She's pissed off entire third-world armies."

"And you called me," Carter shook her head.

"You can call more people than I can. I don't know how much time I have."

"Zip, don't do anything foolish. You aren't trained for this."

"And Daniel is?"

Carter almost smiled, as worried as she was. "You'd be surprised," she said. "I'll get help. You just keep your head down, you and Alister particularly."

"Alister! He was in the Library —"

And Zip's voice cut out as he dropped the headset.

He was clearly going to do something foolish.

* * *

Alister was so very, very glad he'd wasted so many hours of his college life on bar tricks. It was a stupid bit of sleight-of-hand, something any audience other than drunken students would see through in an instant. That, or men who were standing just far enough away in a darkened room to let him get away with it.

The tough part, really, was finding enough time to actually _load_ the thing. To give himself that time he led the mercenary back to the first floor and through the hall of armor. And, yes, that put them closer than they had been to where the Stone was currently secured.

A passing thought troubled him. Did the man already know he was planning something? Was he letting this play out because he was, in fact, leading him close to his goal?

The one thing the mercenary couldn't know, however, is just how far Alister would go to keep the Wraith Stone hidden.

A few doorways past the Hall of Armor the mercenary's eyes flickered towards the Alignment of the Immortals reproduction in the Tiger Anteroom. Alister stopped in front of the William Blake-inspired painting to make his stand.

"Put down your gun!" His voice shook. He wrapped his second hand around the Gyrojet to stabilize it. It had been up in his room, preparatory to their usual morning meet at the indoor pistol range.

The mercenary didn't seem surprised. "So the mouse turns, eh?"

"I'm warning you!" Alister said.

"Warning me what? You won't shoot. You don't have it in you."

"You don't understand," Alister said. "This is bigger than either of us. The Wraith Stone is too dangerous."

The mercenary smiled. "See, I knew you could be helpful. So it is called the 'Wraith Stone,' eh? And our client's real name is Amanda, right?"

"I _will_ shoot!" Alister said.

"You won't." The mercenary walked towards him. He didn't even raise his weapon.

Alister backed right up into the large painting of Blake's tiger, his pulse racing. The man was right. Squeezing the trigger on a paper target was one thing. Shooting at a living human being was something else. But what the mercenary couldn't understand was just how much of a corner he'd backed Alister into.

He remembered cowering, knowing there was no way to fight back against the thing that stalked the mansion. The fiery glow, a red as dark as venous blood. The sudden dashes of impossible speed. He'd seen what it could do. Knew too well the seared and shattered corpses it had left behind in that Peruvian temple where the thing had been unearthed.

"Please…" he said.

The mercenary was in touching distance when he fired.

And the gyrojet round bounced off the man's ballistic vest. "What the hell?" The mercenary staggered back. "Ray guns and rocket pistols?" The round was spinning around wildly on the floor like an escaped firework, throwing up sparks and smoke.

There was a whoosh of displaced air and the tiger reached down and dragged Alister into darkness.

* * *

Bob and Craig made it to the Tech Center without incident. "We could have cut the power anyhow," Craig mused, pointing at the stacks of UPS's sitting below the tangled racks of wire and servers.

"So how long is it going to take you to hack into their system?"

Craig snorted. "Forever. This guy Zip is good — he was one of the youngest heads of IT for a Fortune-500 ever. Got a nice write-up in _Byte_. But all he needs to be is half-assed competent. Until somebody gets NP to equal P, you are never going to crack passwords through brute strength. The thousand monkeys would type out the final _Harry Potter_ book before we got in to this system."

"Yeah, yeah." Bob's attention was hardly on what Craig was saying. The man did this every time. It was as if he couldn't work without complaining about how impossible it was.

"No, I'm not going to waste time hoping he missed one of the obvious holes. Instead I'm stripping his hard disks manually. And if he encrypted the data itself, we're up the creek."

"If he didn't?"

"Then we still have to get lucky."

"You've got twenty minutes," Bob said over his shoulder. Absurd time pressure also seemed to help the man work his miracles.

"Bob?" The voice on the radio was unusually subdued.

"Yeah, Jock." Even now Bob was careful about keeping to the fake names.

"We've got trouble. One of them got away from me. Shot at me with some kind of crazy rocket pistol. I would have dropped him but a _mumble_ and he got away."

"He what, Jock?" Bob was polite but firm.

"A giant samurai grabbed him. Sir."

* * *

"That," the giant samurai said, "was brave."

"Teal'c!" Alister said. His rescuer had arrived just in time. "You've been exploring the mansion's secrets," he realized.

"Indeed." The man was probably smiling, invisible though it was behind the black-and-crimson lacquered _mempo_. Then he doffed it, followed by the high-horned _kabuto_ helm. The only other part of the armor he was wearing were the _spode_ on his upper arms; the high-ranking Japanese warrior for whom the armor had been made had been considerably smaller.

"Teal'c, Amanda is after the Wraith Stone. She mustn't get it."

The big man regarded Alister. "What is an Amanda?"

"It's complicated," Alister said.

"Try," Teal'c said, carefully setting aside the rest of the armor — the helmet with what seemed like particular regret.

"Right." Alister ran a hand through his hair. Straightened his jacket. "It's this way. Amanda and Lara were friends at University. They had a little group. Amanda, Lara, Anaya Imanu, Samantha Nishimura. Some of their rivals called them the Benettons. Sorry — that's an insult that doesn't translate very well. Anaya went into civil engineering, but both she and Amanda were involved in the dig in Peru.

"I'm not sure how to explain this so it makes sense. Amanda and Lara were very close. All the group was, really; Lara doesn't make friends easily, but when she does, she does it with all her heart. And I'm pretty sure Amanda felt the same, which is why she's so hateful now. It takes a strong friendship to make that strong an enemy.

"Anaya was away that one day. First the bucket lift collapsed, temporarily stranding them down in the excavated temple. Really, really old stuff we are talking here. Not just pre-Columbian. Norte Chico or older.

"Then something awakened It." Alister shuddered. "Lara called it 'Fluffy.' Neither I nor Zip could manage to call it that. Not after it chased us around the mansion last time Amanda came looking for something. I call it the 'Unknown Entity.' I have no idea how old it is, where it comes from, even what kind of creature it is. It's just teeth and fire, moves like lightning, can't be hit by ordinary weapons.

"It killed everyone who was down there, Teal'c. Everyone but Lara and Amanda. The excavation flooded and partially collapsed. Teal'c…Lara had to leave Amanda behind. That's the thing Amanda has never forgiven her for. But she got out. Somehow she learned to control the Unknown Entity. And the key was the Wraith Stone, which Amanda took to wearing around her neck.

"Lara…she killed or drove off the Unknown Entity in Bolivia and took the Wraith Stone from Amanda. That's the thing Amanda's sent mercenaries to get."

"Then we had best see to it they do not succeed," Teal'c summed up succinctly.

* * *

"He's still alive!" The voice came from the man inside the library.

"Dai?" Paddy said. "Is he hurt?"

"He's just stunned," the man inside said reassuringly.

"I was going to…I was thinking about throwing a grenade in to get you to come out."

"For both our sakes I'm glad you didn't." the man said dryly. "My name's Daniel. Daniel Jackson. I'm an archaeologist."

"Niall…err, the guys call me 'Paddy.' It's Army slang I think. Kind of insulting, actually."

"Niall of the Nine Hostages," Daniel said. "Although you only have one now."

"You know the legend?" Paddy was surprised. He himself was only barely aware of the story behind his birth name.

"Archaeology covers a lot of ground," Daniel said.

Paddy shifted his grip, worked his way to a more comfortable position. The guys would be here. Eventually. Until then, he wasn't going to risk himself against that ray gun by going in, but by that same ticket, this archaeologist guy wasn't going anywhere either.

"What's this about?" Daniel's voice came from inside.

"Dunno," Paddy said honestly. "We were hired to retrieve an artifact." There was a loudly audible sigh of frustration from inside. "What's that about?" Paddy asked.

"Sorry. Just get tired of the way everyone treats archaeology as some kind of treasure hunt. Context matters, you know."

"No, I don't," Paddy said.

"Yeah, sorry."

"You're pretty good with a gun," Paddy said impulsively. "Err, ray gun. You have any good war stories?"

"I'm not a soldier," Daniel's voice said. His voice changed. "This isn't going to end well," he said. "My friends will be coming."

"So are mine," Paddy said.

Daniel gave a short laugh. "You know, you're lucky it's Teal'c out there."

Paddy thought about that. "He's not very good?"

"Oh, Teal'c is good. He's been fighting for longer than either of us have been alive. He's fought wars of conquest. He was the top bodyguard of a _living god_. I've seen him take on a dozen men at a time. Take a bullet to the chest and keep fighting."

Paddy shook his head. "Then I don't understand. Why did you say I was lucky?"

"You could be facing another friend of mine. Jack O'Neill." Daniel's voice was flat and utterly convincing. "Teal'c will fight you. It's a warrior thing. Jack would end the threat."

Paddy thought about that, too, and it was illuminating in far too many ways. He was beginning to wonder if this career change was all it had promised to be. "Let's talk about something else," he said quickly.

"I do know some war stories," Daniel offered then. "Archaeologists are partly historians, you know."

"Okay," Paddy said. "Try me."

"Let me tell you about a place called Passchendaele," Daniel said.

"Passion Dale? Sounds like a nice place."

"It was. In 1913 it was a quiet, rural village in Flanders, near Ypres. Then came occupation, and the formation of lines of trenches, and the first of a seemingly endless string of battles over the same short kilometers of ground.

"But what I wanted to talk about is October of 1917, when heavy rain began to fall on clay and sand already churned by the massive barrages of artillery. When a landscape as barren and pocked with craters as the surface of the Moon was turned into a sucking, sickening mud…"

* * *

"Bandy, Bootneck." It was Bob on the radio. "Back to the first floor, along the South corridor. One of our targets got loose. I'm having you sweep back towards Jock."

"Did anyone tell him…" Bandy said.

"…How much we hate his codenames?" Bootneck finished. He had a tattoo, which was the closest he came to having anything to do with the Royal Marines. "Lock and load. We're hunting…"

"Nerds with ray guns. Who like playing games."

They were one door away from the Hall of Armor when a voice called to them. "Gentlemen!" the voice said. "Kindly put your weapons on the floor!"

"The hell…" Bandy said.

"…With that!"

One went left, one right, one high, one low. Sweeping the room with their weapons. Nothing but the standing suits of armor. Which looked…different…than they had from the first time they had passed through.

They nodded to each other. "Giant samurai," they said in unison. "Playing stupid games." Bootneck swiveled his weapon and squeezed. A roar of sound came out of the Armalite as he methodically peppered the suit of Samurai armor, rounds plunging through lacquer and metal and silk and any human flesh foolish enough to be hiding inside it.

Their ears were still ringing as he stopped. A faint haze of smokeless powder hung in the air.

One arm on the full suit of medieval plate armor on the next stand over swiveled at the elbow. "You have chosen…poorly," the voice said, older sounding but not nearly old enough to be guarding a Grail.

Bootneck had just time to register the thread tied to the empty armor before a man in the striped trousers of a butler and white shirt but no vest shot him through the wrist. And in the other arm. And in one leg. The man had a bolt-action, but he was very fast, and very very accurate.

Bandy returned fire and the old man fell.

* * *

"Stay here," Teal'c instructed the young man. He moved swiftly through the passage back towards the Hall of Armor. Winston was bloody and on the ground. So was one of the mercenaries; he'd made a good account for himself.

The other mercenary may have believed he was moving quietly, but Teal'c heard him easily. And stalked him as easily. He would probably recover, given time and decent care.

Teal'c dragged his body back to the Hall of Armor. He spared a moment's regret for the firearms, but he'd explicitly promised O'Neill not to, "Go shooting up the place." So instead he appropriated an _assegai_ from a wall display.

Then he knelt by Winston. The man was unconscious and his breathing shallow. He would need medical aid, and soon. Teal'c carefully picked him up and carried him back into the hidden passageway.

* * *

"Nerds with _Star Trek_ weapons!" Jock raged under his breath, stalking the halls with his weapon clenched tight. "Samurai popping out of trap doors! God, I hate this place! And I hate even more the kind of people that are in it."

His radio crackled again. "We found them, sir. Plank was hit by an Aztec war club in the kitchen. Ape was stabbed by a _pilum_ in the dining hall."

"Is this a SITREP or a game of _Clue_?" Bob replied angrily.

"We're not kidding around!" Snowdrop sounded close to panic. "Someone's taking us out one by one!"

"Then start moving four by four," Bob snarled.

Giant vanishing freaks in masks taking out guys with club and spear, great. But there were scrawny know-it-all jokers with fancy clothes and useless crap scifi weapons out here, too, and damned if Jock wasn't going to bag one before the night was over.

"Make a fool of me, will you!" he snarled as he stalked onwards.

* * *

Bob stared bleakly at the radio. Defeat in detail. It was exactly as he had feared.

Okay, on a case by case his guys had held their own. One of the opposition was _hors de combat_, another was safely pinned down. No, what threw off the averages was this x factor, this other person; a person that could seemingly appear wherever he wanted in the sprawling manor, and who could take on an armed man in full body armor with nothing but a Roman spear.

But he was still one man. If he could concentrate his forces…

"Ooh, I'm eating lobster tonight!"

Bob was at his side in a moment. "What do you have, Craig?"

"It's here. In this room."

"Yes!" Bob pumped his fist. That changed the game completely. They only needed to control this room, now, not the entire mansion. Which meant they didn't have to try to wage counter-guerilla warfare — a futile struggle as more than one nation had discovered. Now the situation played to their strengths.

"Wall safe," Craig said. "Disguised as that extra electrical panel over there. Trust academics — they were more concerned with documenting provenance than with data security. Anyhow, it's a Chubb integrated security system. Retinal scanner. But I worked at Chubb for ten years…"

Bob took the radio. "Everyone to the Main Hall," he said. "Objective is here. All we need to do is hold our position for a few minutes longer."

"Can I have thirty?" Craig complained. "It is a Chubb, after all!"

* * *

Finally! Zip whacked the DVD/Laserdisc player back-handed. Yelped. That had hurt. Really, the first clue should have been that no-one was going to release entire seasons of "Magnum, P.I." on DVD. (No matter how attractive that Tom Selleck dude seemed to be among women of a certain age.) Of _course_ it was only a trigger to open the latest hiding place for a pair of Lara's signature automatics.

"The damned Abbingdon Ghost is doing electronics now," he said, aggrieved. No matter how pressed, Winston had never admitted to being the source of the various and ever-changing hidden secrets that kept the lady of the house entertained on a rainy day. Zip and Alister had begun referring to a spirit, a ghost with a sense of humor, a wide-ranging interest in history and literature and a deft hand with things mechanical.

Zip felt a lot better now that he was armed. He left one of the chromed H&amp;K USP's where he found it. Lara might be a two-handed shooter but he was not. He also left the fancy shoulder rig with the fast magazine changer. There was no way he'd be able to learn that trick tonight. It wasn't like it would fit him anyway.

All of a sudden he was uncomfortably aware of being in the private bedroom of his employer and friend. Even if she didn't spend her time here lounging before the big-screen television watching hunky leading men in classic television shows. Probably.

Alister. If this was anything like the last few evenings, he'd still be with Daniel in the Library. Zip chambered the first round, then with a spare magazine in his other hand he moved out.

* * *

"I'm an archaeologist, Teal'c, not a doctor," Alister said helplessly, trying to tend to the fallen Winston. "We need to get him to professional medical help."

"Then we need to conclude this quickly," Teal'c said. "I observed movement among our enemy," he added. "I believe they gather in the Great Hall."

"That's bad," Alister said. Teal'c merely raised his eyebrows. "That's where the Stone is," he amplified.

"Then the battle must be taken to them."

Alister looked at the curved Mughal _shamsir_ in the big man's hands. "I can't," he said. "I get nauseous just at the sight of blood. I'm useless here!" he burst out. "I'm not a warrior. I don't even know how anyone can take a thing like that and, and…"

Teal'c lowered himself to one knee. "It is no shame to be sickened by violence," he said gently. He thought for a moment before his next words. "Alister Fletcher, you have yet to meet the rest of SG1. Know that I respect O'Neill as a warrior. But I also respect Daniel Jackson as a peacemaker, and I respect Major Carter as a scientist. The warrior way is mine, and it wins battles. But it is those like Daniel Jackson and Major Carter who win wars."

"But…to run a man through?" Alister couldn't help asking.

"That is what weapons do." His voice was still gentle. "Alister Fletcher, I believe I understand. It is difficult to render an enemy unconscious without any lasting harm, especially when they are doing their best to cause lasting harm to you. It is necessary to be…pragmatic."

"I can't," Alister said. "In the heat of the moment, under threat, sure, I pulled the trigger. But in cold blood…I can't."

"That speaks well of you," the giant said sadly. "And I hope the time does not come when you discover that you can." He made his own quick examination of Winston. Nodded, stood. Then smiled a thin smile as a thought struck him. "They may not think so, but those in the Great Hall are lucky they are only facing me."

Alister was distracted. "How so?"

"I will fight them," he said. "Daniel Jackson would _talk_ to them."

Then he was gone, and Alister was left with the injured Winston. Daniel Jackson. The archaeologist from the States. Who he had left up in the Library just before the mercenaries attacked.

"Zip!" The realization hit him like a bolt. "If they didn't find him first…he'd head for the Tech Room. Or he'd come to us. Which means the Library."

He scrambled to his feet, and in a moment he was headed off down the secret passage. Almost without him realizing it, his fingers had curled tightly about the butt of the gyrojet.

* * *

It is a natural human reaction to flinch. Soldiers and hunters train for a very, very long time to make their first instinct to point that modern weapon towards a threat and reduce it that way. But a hundred thousand years of evolution is there trying to counter the way it best understands; to raise the hands, to present the side of a rifle as if it were no more than a tree branch in order to ward off a blow.

Teal'c was fortunate in that the first mercenary he approached did not have enough of that training. The big jaffa burst out of the doorway and charged the length of the mezzanine resplendent in Hoplite helmet with tall horsehair crest, burnished breastplate and crimson half-cloak. In one hand was a study trident like a gladiator might have used in the arena.

He got to the man before he was able to power over his instincts and unlock his muscles. A deep lunge, then lift. The man screamed as he was lifted on the tines of the trident and hurled over the rail to the main floor below (although truth be told, most of the weight was born by the ballistic armor he was wearing).

Two men had been stationed at the ends of the galleries, with clear fields of fire across the Great Hall. The other was not distracted by having a giant run towards him. But leading a running man is a skill different from shooting at paper targets.

When Teal'c swiveled to face him across the gallery, he probably had a moment of exultation. He had a ranged weapon.

Unfortunately for him, so did Teal'c. The speargun he'd taken from the room with the pool twanged once and the man fell.

The jaffa continued to move in the smooth speed of vast experience, dropping low behind the solid rail and shifting quickly to put the additional weight of a roof pillar between him and the shooters on the floor below.

The mercenary leader spat something unintelligible. "Fall back!" he ordered. "Behind the barrier, everyone."

Then he looked up, shading his eyes, through the thick acrylic at where Teal'c was crouching. "You're good," the man said. "But we're done playing on your field. This acrylic is bullet-proof as well as spear-proof. Try to stick your head in here and I have four guys to shoot it off."

"Do you have the stone yet?" the jaffa rumbled.

"I do," the leader said without hesitating. "We've got nothing more to do with you. So be pragmatic — let us pull out and we won't have to kill any more of yours."

"I am a warrior," the jaffa said. "But I, too, can be pragmatic."

He opened his hands and with a light toss four live fragmentation grenades went over the top of the barrier into the enclosed Tech Room.

* * *

The black guy popped out of a door and Jock shot him. It wasn't a clean shot; actually, he hit the guy in the leg. Hardly mattered, though, with a modern military round. The 5.56 would blow a fist-sized chunk of an exit wound, and that's before you factored in hydrostatic shock.

The guy was still conscious, though. Down, and he'd lost his weapon, but still conscious. Good. He had that whole sweat pants and dreads thing going like one of those bank drones who went around on the weekends dressing like a street punk and smelling of ganja. Jock was going to enjoy shooting him. He'd missed the proper double tap but he could still follow up with the last part of the Mozambique Drill.

"Nooo!" a shout came from behind him. Jock turned his head. It was Commander Cody, all right, with his rocket pistol. At the far end of the hallway. Even less of a threat. Jock gave him a long, "you are next" look then deliberately turned to finish off his friend.

The nerd fired. If the human brain worked that fast Jock could have figured out his mistake while the round was in flight. The selling point of the MBA Gyrojet series of weapons had been the lack of recoil. Like their larger military counterparts the RPG or the MANPAD it released a self-propelled rocket instead of pushing a round downrange on the pressure of rapidly expanding gasses.

Two things killed that promising weapon, leaving it a curiosity of the 1960's. One was a quality control problem with the rockets themselves that compromised accuracy. The other was the simple fact that unlike a conventional handgun the velocity was _lowest_ at the muzzle, increasing at an accelerating rate over flight.

The rocket still had fuel to burn when it hit the center of Jock's ballistic vest, but it was by then moving at just under the speed of sound. This time it punched through easily. The temporary cavitation was the size of a football and small blood vessels tore across several vital organs as the shock wave expanded through his torso. Jock's eyes rolled up and he collapsed without a sound.

* * *

"Goddamn, that hurts!" Zip said again. In the back of his mind, he was aware that shock had set in and the pain he felt now was nothing compared to what he should be feeling. He couldn't look at his leg. He'd been hit somewhere in the area of his left knee but between blood and swelling and his reluctance to learn all the bad news just yet he had no real idea what the real damage was.

"Hey, I've got Carter!" He announced to the others.

"Local authorities are en route," Carter said. "They'll be there within ten minutes."

"Winston's in bad shape," Alister said, worried.

"Tell Alister I heard that," Carter said. "We've got a plan."

"I can see the place now," an older male voice came; someone in the same room with her. "One minute."

"Ring me down the moment we are over the house," Carter said, obviously speaking to him. "Zip, that big hall I'm seeing from here; can you make sure no-one is standing there?"

Um, what? Zip raised his voice. "Everyone, Carter says she's going to ring us. And something about staying out of the middle of the Great Hall."

"Understood," Teal'c nodded.

"I'm glad someone does," Zip complained.

Forty seconds later, the Great Hall was lit up by a pillar of blue-white light. Five thick rings of some sort of metallic substance materialized one after another, then the space within the column was filled with a brilliance of sleeting particles.

The rings vanished, again one by one. And a blond woman with short hair wearing US Air Force fatigues was standing there.

"Major Carter!" Teal'c's grin was wide. He gently lifted the injured Winston and placed him carefully where Carter had appeared.

"We're ready," she said into her own radio headset. "Stand back," she advised everyone else, unnecessarily.

The light show and the mysterious geometric shapes came and went again. "He's in good hands," Carter reassured the others. "Thanks for the lift, dad," she told the person on the radio. "I'll stay here and try to help smooth things over with the authorities," she finished.

She took off the headset. Took in the Great Hall with a quick glance. "Wow," she said. "A girl could get used to living in a place like this." She then took a long look at the tattered survivors of the night's excitement.

"You, you're…" too many questions were tumbling over Zip's tongue. "Your dad has his own spaceship?"

"Long story," Carter said. "Here's a better question; where's Daniel?"

* * *

There was no-one outside the Library door when they approached. They heard voices from within.

"That's Daniel," said someone.

"No one there had any idea how (or why) Allied logistics had managed to get this one package through when all others had failed," they could hear Daniel saying. "The Marines were still starving, low on ammunition and shivering with dysentery…but they now struggled through the jungle wearing very nice hats."

Carter rolled her eyes. Put her weapon up and walked in.

Daniel Jackson was back on the couch (what was left of it). In one of the chairs perched a shorter, younger man with a rounded friendly face — looking both nervous and not a little wan at the moment.

"Don't shoot," Daniel said earnestly but calmly, holding his hands out. "Everyone, this is Niall Mulroney. He grew up along 'Scottie Road' — that's in Liverpool. He's an auto body specialist and plays a mean penny whistle."

"And I never, never want to be in a war," the young man said. "Or even hold a gun again."

Carter sighed, but fondly. Teal'c gave Alister a significant look. As deadpan as he no doubt intended to be, the big jaffa's eyes were wrinkled in a smile.

"Sam?" Daniel said lightly.

She sighed again. "Okay, Daniel." She gestured towards the young man. "Out," she said.

"Go through the East Wing. Continue through the gardens," Alister said impulsively. "The locals always come up the main drive."

* * *

Major Carter had made a _lot_ of calls. The locals came in wary and well-armed, and toting stretchers, but they didn't come with guns drawn. They were surprisingly phlegmatic about the fact that whatever had happened, it was significantly above their pay grade and they were not going to be allowed to ask any real questions.

Sam suspected, strongly, this was not a new state of affairs. With the kind of money the Croft's had, and the kind of trouble Lara had been known to get into, this had probably happened more than once before.

Surprisingly, most of the mercs had survived, and their chances were considered good. There was a qualitative difference in the kind of injuries pre-gunpowder weapons produced. The worst off were those who had been in the Tech Room when several grenades landed among them.

Their hacker was practical uninjured. According to him, their leader — apparently a one-time member of the British Parachute Regiment — had shielded him with his own body. The man seemed to think that "Bob" would have wanted it that way.

Zip was not doing well. The EMTs had taken one look at his leg and shook their heads sadly before bundling him into the next ambulance in line. Sam gathered he would probably walk again, but he'd have a limp for the rest of his life. Otherwise he seemed strong, and in good spirits. Which might have had something to do with the kiss on the forehead she'd given him before his stretcher was wheeled out.

All the excitement meant she hadn't had a chance to fully share her news with Daniel. She finally got a moment to blurt out a rapid explanation as she handed over the one printout she'd been able to make before Jacob's arrival.

"Doctor Felgar is still massaging the data," she said, "But a quick first-pass heuristic for statistical significance pulled up over a dozen possible hits."

She showed him the map. "Naquadah concentrations are here," she pointed.

"Syria," Daniel said.

"And here, and here," she pointed. "All possible locations for undiscovered Ancient technology. Here, in the Mediterranean."

"That's Santorini!" Daniel said. "The Thera eruption…"

"…And here," she pointed to a spot in the mountain range at the extreme North end of California. "And here," she found a spot in the Atlantic ocean.

"Atlantis," Alister said.

"Oh, not this again," Daniel snorted.

"No…" Alister said. "Daniel, I was playing you before. I've read my Donelly too. I already knew most of that stuff you were going on about. Atlantis is real, Daniel. As real as ringworm."

"Atlantis!" Daniel said in exasperation. "Which one, pray tell? Plato's? Thera? Mu?"

"Why…all of them." Alister blinked.


	22. Chapter 21: Key to the Past

Don't change color, kitty.

Keep your color, 'cause

we need your kind around.

But the minute you change your looks,

we're bringing you with us out of town.

— Excerpt from the Raycat song, "a 10,000 year earworm"

We're now in the American Southwest and talking about hyperdiffusionism. So it may get a little racially charged. Be warned. Oh, and Lara's short-lived alias, although it may look from some angles like cultural appropriation, is what TVTropes calls a Mythology Gag (and far from the first one here, either).

* * *

Roswell, NM, 33°23′14″N 104°31′41″W

* * *

Mira was scowling in the direction of a giant coffee cup.

She hated _huecheros._ It wasn't quite the right term, but she'd done her graduate work in Peru and the term stuck. The relationship there between the local peoples and their cultural heritage was…complex. Yes, looting was endemic. There were also depredations (usually of relatively more recent graves) by _brujas_. The indigenes of the small mountain villages were almost unimaginably poor, and it would be hard to fault them grubbing for the relics of cultures long past when they discovered how much certain foreigners were willing to pay for them.

And from an archaeologist's standpoint, even if the person they turned an artifact in to for the monetary reward was an academic, it had still been wrested from that most essential context, the context that allowed it to speak across the ages.

But what this casually patronizing sympathy missed was the very real connections these remote village people had to the continuity of their past. They venerated the graves of their ancestors in a continuity of family and cultural identity. And they connected emotionally with the grand empires of the past, the sophisticated, urban, technologically advanced empires that had ruled over vast swathes of Mesoamerica.

Not to oversimplify, but when you got looting, or even the scavenging for the proper skull for ritual magic, it was usually outsiders. Sometimes just from the next village over, but more likely out of the sprawling and even more desperately impoverished urban centers from whose perspective being among the conquered peoples of the Aztec empire would be a step up.

Newbery had his own notions of what constituted advanced technology, of course. Mira refused to give him the honorific "Commander." Although to give the man his due, at least he wasn't flaunting a fake doctorate before his name, like so many in his line of work did. He was as bad as any looter. His monomaniacal focus on lost technologies and his imagined connections between the early civilizations and space aliens or Atlantis or whatever made his "excavations" look like Schliemann at Troy.

Newbery might think the comparison flattering. In his hunt for proof of the Troy of Homer, for the honor of ripping a golden death mask (which he named Agamemnon's) from a disintegrating corpse, Schliemann had torn through the archaeological horizons of Troy and at least four other cities below it. Doing to Troy, as Kenneth Harl had written, what the Greek army had been unable.

It didn't help that her current line of work was essentially in direct opposition to what he did.

Archaeology was an extremely competitive field. There weren't many university slots, and there wasn't a lot of grant money out there for fieldwork, either. The happening game these days was CRM. Which stood for Cultural Resources Management, and had close ties to another Federal edict, that of NAGPRA.

And, yes, Mira agreed with the aim of the latter. And not just due to her experiences in South America. She looked at it this way; despite the great boon it would be to historians of the Civil War, it would be unacceptable to hold mass exhumations at Arlington. So why would it be okay to dig up and then display in a glass case the human remains and sacred objects from earlier inhabitants?

Where it got trickier is when the materials were already out of the ground; was there an obligation to science to give enough time to study them before they were repatriated? And what was "enough time?" Worse, the further back one went, the less clear it was who the descendants actually were. Ishi might be the last of the Yani but his remains could still be returned to the closely related Yana. Kennewick Man, on the other hand, had been found in the current location of one current tribal group but he had been shown to be genetically related to a rather more distant one — only adding to the multi-way wrangle over where his remains properly belonged.

However. Mira's frown went deeper. That was the case on Federal or Tribal land. On private land, things got…more complicated. Some states, like California, had robust protections. Some did not.

CRM was part of the skien of protections. For Mira, it wasn't just a job — wasn't just the economic necessity in these days of shrinking research budgets — it was her passion. It was, she had to admit, often frustrating. She'd made it through the hard-scrabble years and avoided the temptation of being a career field tech.

A lot of people hadn't. Field techs were like migrant farm workers with post graduate degrees. Deadheads that instead of wearing tie-dye and following a band around while they lived out of their cars and survived day-to-day, were wearing Army Surplus and boots covered in duct tape repairs while they dug test pits in the hot sun.

Well, digging test pits on good days. Mira owned her own small CRM firm now. She had a good relationship with the Museum of New Mexico and the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department. She'd been involved in the big Chaves County survey. But when the objective was mostly to find the negative; to show a particular plot of land was bare enough of significant history that construction could go ahead on a new turnpike or whatever, even shovel tests were rare. Most studies didn't get past Stage One; sending the field techs to walk slowly across the ground in hopes they would stumble upon archaeologically significant material lying on the surface.

And she missed the kind of work she'd been a part of in Peru. Of getting down deep enough to see the layers of cultural activity as one occupant was supplanted by the next, one usage overturned by a new one, one culture absorbed into or overtaken by another.

Of the piecing together of the tiny clues — or, rather, the generation of aggregate data that could then be mapped and graphed to tease out the significant trends. She shook her head, her annoyance rising again. The finds weren't in the ground, they _were_ the ground. If you dug like Schliemann searching for a carved idol or a coin, you dug right through the changes in soil and the scatter of debris that marked a fire pit or a place where biface arrowheads were being chipped out or the location of a hut.

You ended up with a _thing_, an article ripped from its context, that you could then make fanciful deductions from like Sherlock Holmes at his worst. And in finding it you'd destroyed the actual picture of the real, multi-faceted, complex culture that had created it.

She looked again at the cafe across the street from her. It was called "Out of This World" and balanced on the facade was a coffee cup about eight feet in diameter. Neither was that unusual in this town. The cup was one of those remnants of a previous age of Roadside America you still saw in odd corners of the US, like giant lumberjacks or big red dogs with chef's hats.

The name was in keeping with the one thing most outsiders thought of when they heard the name Roswell. A little ways down the street a statue of a green alien with big eyes stood in front of a gaudier shop with the same theme. And that was far from the end of it.

Newbery's little motorcade fit right in. He was staying in town, and driving out each day in that showy parade of militarized civilian vehicles of his, black and chrome ducklings led by that ridiculous white elephant that loomed over the block and caught the eyes of even the more jaded tourists.

His daily routine was to pull the whole circus parade up in front of the Out Of This World for breakfast. He was doing _something_ just thirty miles out of town. The Green Sun experimental solar farm was private land, but it was surrounded by BLM land. Not that BLM had an unspotted reputation when it came to protection of archaeological sites, either. In this checkerboard of regulation Newbery could probably get away with digging. As long as he didn't uncover any human remains; that would put him squarely in opposition of the Unmarked Burial Statute of the New Mexico Cultural Properties Act.

Thing is…and this is where his activities twisted in her gut, and made her give up useful work hours in order to shadow him, working up her courage for what was sure to be another fruitless confrontation…Newbery's extremely off-the-mainstream theories had preemptively declared any remains he might find as conveniently _not human in the first place_.

Mira was unwilling to follow him down the rabbit hole of his personal beliefs. Whatever they were; he seemed willing to declare on practically anything that would get him air time and sponsorship, tapping into any and all of the unfettered miasma of anti-science belief systems out there. But there was enough of a through line to be sure that any skull he discovered would be promptly promoted as some sort of alien or alien-human hybrid or offspring of angel and human or whatever nonsense.

Movement. He was coming out. Breakfast over, he would be heading out to smash up whatever cultural heritage was in the way of his ridiculous quest.

Mira got up. Then stopped. There was a new person with him.

Pink 50's waitress outfit. That's right, Mira remembered; the cafe was trying out a 50's retro thing right now. The outfit looked vintage, and the woman had the figure to carry it off, too, with her long brunette hair piled high on top of her head.

Which totally failed to disguise her from Mira. She knew that face. And she sat back down.

The whole Newbery problem had moved out of her league. This was the Countess Croft. She was, Mira mused, an even more apt throwback to a 19th-century archaeology, where digging through Troy or filling your suitcase with bits of the Parthenon were par for the course. Before the rise of a professional class, when science was the pursuit of dilettantes and the well-to-do.

Amusingly enough, pseudo-scientists in general seemed to be living in the past. Whether they were objecting to evolution or Einstein, the few primary sources they employed were inevitably laughably out of date. It was rare indeed to find one with a subscription to current journals. Possibly because the results of properly-done studies tended to blow their pet theories out of the water.

The CRM archaeologist sat back, and she returned to her abandoned breakfast. There was the slightest hint of a grim smile on her face. They called Croft "The Tomb Raider." It was said that were she went, she was followed by fire and blood (and, eventually, mysterious government types who would throw a veil of official secrecy over the smoldering ruins.)

If that reputation had any truth in it, whatever was out at Green Sun was doomed. But so — whether he knew it yet or not — was Newbery.

* * *

Abbington Estate, Surrey, 51.15°N 0.25°W

* * *

"So this is it," Carter said quietly. She didn't add, "Such a small thing for all the deaths it has caused," mostly because Alister was still feeling first-kill remorse, but also because she very much knew better. Especially now that they'd entered the Digital Age, information could be kept in small packages indeed. And information, in Carter's estimation, was the most dangerous weapon of them all.

The stone was teardrop shaped, like the fancy cut in gemstones called pear or drop. But it was neither faceted nor a gem. It was black, polished rock with faint veining of green that almost reminded her of certain uranium ores. Carved into it in deep relief was a skull-like face, the lower jaw lost in a tight series of parallel striations suggesting a long beard, the eyes round and hollow, the forehead inhumanly long. A symbol was incised over one eye, a complex spiraling glyph that to her untrained eye looked almost Maori.

If she had to describe that face, it would be like if one of Whitley Streiber's vaguely Asgard-like aliens had gotten into Heavy Metal and made a carved totem instead of an album cover. It looked unbelievably ancient and intriguingly mysterious and evil as all get-out and she found it hard to believe this Amanda person had ever wanted to wear the thing as a necklace.

"The Wraith Stone," Alister said. He ran a hand through his long hair in a rather Daniel-like fashion. "Or so Amanda called it. There is absolutely nothing in the archaeological record about this thing. Or about the Unknown Entity. My theory is that it was so terrible every bit of writing about it was intentionally destroyed, the very memory of it erased."

"Like her successors tried to do to Hatshepsut, that female pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty," Daniel said.

"Or the entire Amarna period," Alister rejoined. "But against this is the fact that it was on display in the Tiwanaku II complex near Paraiso. Deep underground, probably seen only by the highest priests, but still there."

"Yeah," Carter added her observation. "Funny how no-one ever seems to think of tossing the Artifact of Doom into the ocean." So many of the science fiction and fantasy films she enjoyed would have been _much_ shorter. "They always keep it in a fancy temple filled with booby-traps and surrounded by legends to make it extra attractive."

This had been an interesting problem brought up during development of the Deep Geological Nuclear Repository at Yucca Mountain. Bechtel and DOE had put together a task group of engineers and anthropologists and behavioral scientists, eventually joined by linguists and semioticians and inevitably some science fiction writers to try to figure out some way to warn the people of 10,000 years in the future not to go digging further into the mysterious treasure chamber they might have discovered. And especially not to play around with the odd-looking barrels of warm, oily, semi-solid sludge inside.

Among the more out-there solutions proposed was the genetic engineering of special color-changing cats, and the spreading of legends and folklore concerning the ill effects of hanging out anywhere where these feline canaries were turning carmine. The problem was one of time. Cultures changed. Languages changed. How could you keep a "Danger: Radioactive Waste" sign intact through 10,000 years of the Telephone Game?

"So what do you think the Unknown Entity was, Daniel?" She turned her question to her team-mate.

"Never having seen it myself, first-hand…" Daniel frowned. "But it sounds barely corporeal. We've learned about energy entities before. But I don't even know if it was something they found — something that came to Earth — or something that was _made_. Like some sort of guardian."

"I'm pretty sure the Wraith Stone pre-dates the Tiwanaku Empire," Alister told him. "Pre-Columbian culture of the southern Andes regions of Peru and Chile, from about 300 CE," he explained to Carter. "Wiped out, possibly due to a climate shift, around 1000 CE; there was little left of the cities that had supported over a million souls when the Incan Empire moved in some four hundred years later."

"So, Chavin?" Daniel said.

"Good guess but I don't think so. There's pretty good signs the Tiwanaku culture inherited some of their belief systems from them, but the incredible prehistoric complex at Chavín de Huantar shows signs of the Chavin culture having reached much higher levels of sophistication. In any case, they don't go back _nearly_ far enough; probably no more than 1,000 BCE. I have some reason to believe we need to be looking even further back."

"_How_ far back?" Daniel's jaw was dropping.

"At least ten thousand years," Alister said. He looked at the others. Tapped the side of the sealed box containing the Wraith Stone, "This has enough points of similarity to be firmly typed among a small group of artifacts found across the world, including among them the Galali Key. Extremely ancient items. Items of power."

"Power," Carter said drily. "You mean they are technological."

"I would call them mystical," Alister objected.

Daniel coughed. "What's that Clarke guy you keep quoting, Sam? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?"

"There's a corollary, "Carter grinned. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."

"Huh," Daniel said. "Who said that one?"

"Agatha Heterodyne."

* * *

The History Channel from A &amp; E: available world-wide and on DirectTV

* * *

_Fog-shrouded woods at night. Shafts of blue-white light coming through the close-packed trees. A low, throbbing music. Two men in primitive clothing — animal skins, stone axes in hand, painted faces — enter at a stumbling run. In several quick cuts they look back as if for pursuers. Narration begins._

"Next on _Key to the Past:_ what drove the early inhabitants of America from these fertile lands to the steaming jungles of Central America?"

_A panning shot, color-graded in orange and red, across a photograph of a Mayan step pyramid._

_Shock cut to a man wearing a feather shawl as he grimaces into the camera. He raises his hands revealing the fingers have been painted red._

_Quick intercuts of an obsidian dagger, of hands near a bare supine torso, back to the man's face._

_The music changes to a sprightly bit of royalty-free synthesized orchestral music with a sub-Aaron Copland sound. Helicopter shot over the Blue Ridge mountains, somewhere in Virginia. Narration resumes over._

"Our team of brave explorers travel to the heart of primitive America to learn the secrets of the mysterious Mound Builders. Join forensic geologist R. Barringer Newbery, crypto-zoologist Barry Wentworth, Wendy and Sarah…"

_Quick cuts between hand-held camera shots; first of the emblematic Ark III, then of Newberry looking thoughtfully out over the horizon, then of everyone clowning and making faces for the camera. The last is a pure glamor shot of Wendy shoulders-up, framed against the setting sun._

_Music stops. Talking-head shot of Newberry in his Command Post._

"You find these references everywhere. Even up to the recent past. As recent as 1870, Ohio newspapers reported a Mr. William Thompson had unearthed a remarkable skeleton on his property. That specimen has long since vanished into the Smithsonian archives."

_Ken Burns-style pan-and-zoom across period photographs of men in hats and long coats standing around in the outdoors. The image cross-fades to Wentworth working at a desk in front of a board covered with clippings; the famous "Nessie" photograph prominent among them. Wentworth is heard in voice-over._

"This is like no human skull I've ever seen."

_Shock chord over still of a skull with a distorted cranium, slanting back from a low brow to a bulging occiput. Then the thickly wooded Virginian ridge-line reappears. It is the same helicopter shot, only now it is color-graded and accompanied by mysterious, vaguely threatening music. The narrator wraps up._

"Something stalked the earth. Something capable of lifting massive boulders and shifting tons of dirt and rock. Something that terrified the early Native Americans." _The narrator's voice drops, adding emphasis. _"Something that may still be out there, stalking the remote valleys and desolate peaks of our own modern nation."

_At last the signature two-color background is seen, with the show logo superimposed; a Horus Eye on a simplified Aztec Sun Stone, surrounded by microscope, rock hammer, and a laptop computer. The narrator's voice is up-beat again. _"Thursday at 8:00, 7:00 Central, and at 4:30 on Saturday morning. Please join us… Learn the true history of our world by finding the _Key to the Past._"

* * *

Green Sun Experimental Power Station, Chaves County NM; 33°02′35″N 103°51′13″W

* * *

There was a reason, Lara reflected, she had started having her field gear custom made. For her first day at the Genesis dig she had shopped in town and found boot-cut Levis and a long-sleeved flannel shirt, which she was wearing open and knotted off above a white t-shirt. She remembered quite ruefully her first digs, and the struggle to find clothing actually suitable for the female archaeologist.

Clothes robust enough to stand the rigors of the field were hard enough to find in the women's clothing aisles at Marks and Spencer, but when you added the kind of protection and durability to deal with crawling over knife-edge shale at a neolithic site or kneeling in frigid mud in the delightful Cambridge rainy season for a project at Castle Hill, the choices fell rather short.

Women's clothing was made and marketed to be seen in, not to work in, and unfortunately a rain jacket and wellies built for a bloke weren't suitable either; shaped wrongly enough to chafe badly over a day in the field. And that's before you added the fashion flavor of the week to be followed slavishly by everyone but the hopelessly classic — most recently, low-rise jeans that threatened a full moon even getting out of a Toyota, much less bending over a trowel.

"Welcome to our site!" R. Barringer Newbery was in his element. The convoy was parked in nearly military order just off the one-lane dirt road that struck off from US 380 to run nearly parallel with the edge of the escarpment. This was high desert; nearly flat, the sandy, alkaline soil dotted with burrograss and the smallest scrub of mesquite. The beginnings of the Mescalero Escarpment, the transition to the high plains of Texas and the eastern part of the state, showed as crumbling outcrops of reddish sedimentary rock. Above it all the sky was a pale blue, clear and empty as an agoraphobe's nightmare, leavened not at all by a narrow horizon of painted clouds.

Newberry waved a hand, expansively, towards the hundred-meter tall solar tower standing high above the desert and brilliant in the reflected light of the field of heliostats around it. "That's the Green Sun experimental power plant, there," he told Lara. "Solar concentrator, molten-salt type. Not utility-scale; it's under ten megawatts output. The land was originally leased by a wildcat drilling company back in the 50's."

Lara knew that already. Qualopec Drilling Co. They'd grown and expanded and been subsumed in a shell game of corporate holdings that eventually found relatively stable form under the meaningless acronym NEXTI (at a time when that sort of name had become common among energy companies…even staid old British Petroleum eventually rebranded as the multinational BP.)

NEXTI spun off subsidiaries, one of them being Green Sun; just enough independent management to supervise building a test plant out here near the edge of the Mescalero Escarpment. But Lara couldn't help but think there had been other than convenience and a slim shot at oil to drive interest here. Among other clues, Newbery appeared to have more than book sales and surprisingly popular cable shows supporting him. Without a look at his books she couldn't say more, but it would not surprise her to find he had big donor or two back there as well. Humvee's didn't come cheap, not even GM's civilian knock-off "Hummer."

And of course there was that original name. Qualopec. Right. Not a name a lot of people knew, and even fewer back in the 50's. "So…" she turned back to Newbery, "You said paleo-indian relics?"

"You bet." Newbery had a brisk, ingratiating way of speaking, with a little smile that simulated apology for the way he appeared to be lecturing at, if not outright talking down to, his listeners. "Archaeology out in the Four Corners has never had the popularity. Not a lot of stone structures, much less the kind of monumental stuff that draws attention."

"What about the cliff dwellings?" Lara asked.

"Well, sure. There's some pretty spectacular Anasazi stuff, even if it is mostly mud-brick and sandstone. Bandelier. Chaco; the latter's a UNESCO site. Still, hard to show off against, say Chichen Itza."

"Much less Saqqara," Lara said dryly. Shortly into her first conversation with him she'd given up any attempt at pretending naiveté. They were at this point holding to a tacit though unspoken pretense that she had a history degree somewhere in an otherwise unremarkable academic background.

"Laura Cruz," she'd named herself when first asked. Spycraft from _Boy's Own_, there; pick a name similar enough to your own you'd remember to turn around when someone called it.

"You don't look local," had been his only comment. He meant hispanic; people who checked that mark on their census were just below a majority in New Mexico, a trend that had begun from at least the Spanish settlement before the Louisiana Purchase and other large-scale shuffling of borders (with the odd war here and there) that had at last ended in the early 20th century when the place became a State.

And, no, she hadn't looked local, whether or not her hair was in the signature waist-length braid or pinned up almost high enough to earn her a spot in the B52's. It was the accent that did it. She hadn't even contemplated trying to hide it by speaking Spanish; she knew a smattering of South American dialects but nothing of the archaic Castilian-derived "New Mexico Spanish" with its generous helping of English and indigenous loan-words.

"When people think 'Indian,' they're usually thinking Plains Indians," Newberry was continuing to lecture. "Apache, Navajo, like that. And those are recent, real recent. As late as the fifteenth century — Joan of Arc was running around France by then."

It was the Navajo who had used the name "Anasazi," with connotations sufficient that many modern descendants preferred the term "Ancestral Pueblo" for the culture they'd been discussing earlier. At least Newbery was far from the trap of thinking of Native American — of any period — as a single cohesive group, whether in culture or political aims.

"Before the Anasazi things get more hazy," Newbery said. "Archaic-period cultures include the Cochise and Chihuahua. Basically hunter-gatherer, working their way up towards agriculture."

Which was also what was left behind after the Ancestral Pueblo culture crashed — with exceptions like the Hopi and Pueblo who, now that maize had been introduced, stuck with subsistence agriculture. Which was, Lara reflected, rather a key to understanding Newbery's complaint about the lack of monumental architecture. Hunter-gatherer societies didn't have the labor surplus generated by organized agriculture. That's why monuments were where you found farms. Not where you found buffalo.

"And back before that?" Lara prodded, again having no real idea how much of this conversation was acting — on both their parts.

"Neolithic. Paleo-indians were hunters. Bison. _Mastodon_. With stone tools. Clovis points; that's why we call it the Clovis culture. And it goes back to at least ten thousand years. Even today you can find the flakes right there on top of the ground all over this state."

"You aren't digging for stone flakes," Lara said, just slightly conspiratorially.

"No," Newbery grinned. "That's the mainstream view anyhow. Clovis culture, coming down across the Bering ice bridge towards the end of the last Ice Age, filtering down into Mesoamerica where the first serious civilizations in the Americas began. No…I think there's a lot more to it than that."

"Oh?" Lara was noncommittal.

"More than 'Ice Age' being a misnomer," Newbery said with a glint. "I know quite well we're in the middle of the Quaternary glaciation; we're just in a little interglaciation between glacial maximums."

Dammit, the man was sharp. Lara had to remind herself again not to underestimate him. He might spout an inanity like "Bering ice bridge" for Beringia, but that didn't mean he didn't have a pretty good idea of the real picture.

"So you're a Solutrean, then?" she asked. It was the hot theory of the month.

Newbery didn't answer directly. "You have to remember the timing here," he said. "The Americas got a late start. By the time they were up to building cities, Rome had already risen and fallen. Is it so beyond possibility that someone who had seen pyramids already came by to drop a few hints on the Aztecs?"

"Well, when you put it that way…" Lara didn't feel like arguing it out today. They had set a good walking pace and were almost at the excavation. Besides; she'd had days when she'd seen ten even more impossible things before breakfast. A few wandering Egyptian savants in Mesoamerica was not that much to stomach.

Not against Natla.


End file.
